Omega
by Goldenwing42
Summary: A simple unicorn is forced to flee Equestria and survive in the harsh Outer World with a powerful crimelord on his tail and only his crew, his wits, and the ship he stole to keep him alive. Check out my profile to find the full story!
1. Ch 1: A Little Adventure

Omega by Goldenwing42

* * *

Ch. 1: A Little Adventure

**Omega**

**Chapter 1 : A Little Adventure**

Equestria.

Equestria is a big place. Vast horizons stretching from one coast to the next, dotted with settlements of pony, griffon, and half a dozen other species in climates of every kind. The map on my wall did its best to explain the majesty of the land, but nothing really ever compared to traveling it myself. Never has.

The map was old, the paper worn to a brown hue from age and trauma. Notes and sketches were crammed into all the empty spaces that could be found, and even more filled the sheets of paper pinned to its surface. I had stared at and labored over the map for pretty much all of my adult life. I could tell you the best way to get from any city to the next, including landmarks and shortcuts, plus all the towns nearby it important to my trade. I made my bits buying low and selling high, taking advantage of any difference in supply and demand that I could find.

The sunlight filtering through the window suddenly moved from the map to my face in a way that was very, very, bright and antagonizing. _How does such a filthy glass let so much light through when I don't want it?_ Whenever I actually needed it, it was never there.

_What was I just doing…?_ I sighed inwardly. _I get lost in maps too easy._

"No! I'm telling you, the problem isn't the delivery system! It's the electrolysis matrix!"

_Nothing like the sound of arguing mares to clear the morning fog._ I remembered what I was doing: checking over my logs to make sure everything was still in order. It was unlikely that anything had changed since last night, but it never hurt to be safe. It would bother me all day if I didn't check it, anyways.

"By Celestia's sparkly mane, you're gonna kill us all! Just let me look at- " A loud slam cut through the ship.

"I don't have time for your foalish ideas! Do you have any grasp of how difficult it is to maintain this rusty old engine!? Your idiotic meddling _doesn't_ help!"

"Maybe if we didn't have _you_ working on it, it wouldn't break down so friggin' much!" A frustrated equine scream followed by a worrying metallic groan emerged from the ship, and I prayed that nothing too expensive had been broken.

We were traveling to Manehattan with my share of the latest harvest of Ponyville zapapples. They were regularly one of my most lucrative runs, even with my admittedly small hold in the market.

"What do you mean '_we'_? It's _my_ job to maintain the engine! _I'm_ the _cloudgineer_! _I'm_ the one who understands how this works! _You_ get back to your plumbing or whatever it is you do!"

"You break everything!"

"_I _break everything!? Go set something on fire and stick your mane in it!"

The sound of a furious tussle leaked through the walls.

My stomach rumbled. _Time for breakfast. Pouring over charts does no good if I die of starvation, after all._ I glanced at the map one last time before leaving my quarters, entering a combination of a hallway and antechamber. Here, the three quarters, cargo bay, engine room, lounge, and stairway to the navigation floor above all came together. The sounds of conflict continued to leak out of the engine room, while the faint pounding of dubstep drifted down from the navigation floor.

I strolled into the lounge, a wide open room lined with a few sofas, tables, and portholes. A bar on the far side of the room separated it from the kitchen. Behind it stood a noticeably muscular giant of a stallion with a white coat and short-cropped, blonde mane and tail.

"Morning, Cleaver," I mumbled. I trotted up to the cook. Apparently the mares' screaming hadn't completely woken me up yet.

"Hrm? Ah, Kaptain! Good afternoon. Have been up for hours, listening to angry fillies argue." He spoke with a heavily accented baritone, turning on the stove to heat a pot of what I assumed to be leftover breakfast. "Why have you slept so late?"

I shrugged, glancing out the window idly as I sat at the bar. "I was reading late last night. Some books are hard to put down."

The sound of angry hooves announced the presence of one of the loud mares from the earlier argument. "That pegasus is impossible! She has no idea how to treat that machine!"

A white unicorn mare stomped her way into the lounge and flopped down on a couch. Her short fiery mane and tail looked more ruffled than usual, and I could feel her anger even from my position across the room.

"Cleaver, food!" she commanded.

Cleaver made a small grunt as he shuffled about his kitchen. "Little pony should calm head. Stormslider knows her job. She is best trained member of crew."

"Best _formally_ trained, maybe!" she shot back. "That machine is suffering because of her. She has no idea how to treat it!" She pulled a lighter out and lit it with a burst of magic, holding the tiny flame close.

I turned to face her. "Calm down, Ember. She has only the best intentions for our engine. She's hardly going to break the one thing keeping us up here."

"How can I be calm when she's in there tormenting that machine?" Ember said heatedly. The engine revved up for a few brief moments, as if agreeing with her.

Cleaver served me a bowl of tomato and bread soup from the pot, and brought Ember a fluffy omelet.

"Eggs again? Really?" She sighed.

"Enjoy meal. Calm yourself. You are no good to ship in distress," Cleaver said. He returned to his kitchen and the bottle of vodka on the counter, reaching down to take a quick sip. Ember grumbled something under her breath.

"Thanks, Cleaver. I'm going to go check things with Silver," I said. He pushed a small plate of vegetables towards me, and I levitated it to my side before trotting back to the antechamber.

The faint pounding of the dubstep was dramatically louder once I reached the navigation floor. Despite being played from the other side of the door which led to the cockpit, the music seemed to fill the entire level with an audible fog, blurring my vision. My pilot enjoyed playing dubstep when he flew, and he played it loud.

One couldn't truly appreciate the volume until they opened the door.

Despite years of experience to temper my ears, entering the cockpit remained an exercise in incredible willpower. The vibrations in the air were so intense that passing over the threshold was like physically penetrating a wall of bubble wrap.

The cockpit was a room that seemed designed to confuse anypony inside as quickly as possible. Various levers, chains, pulleys, and pedals were crammed into the small space with no discernible pattern. The walls and dashboard were decorated with switches and gauges so worn that any identifying colors they might have had were long faded, and any labels that may have indicated their purposes were gone as well. In the center of the room, sitting before the bubble of glass at the front of the ship, Silver Feather bobbed his head to the beat. His tall silver mane, dark orange coat, and long tail bobbed and swayed in perfect tandem with the music as he eyed the instruments before him.

With some quick magic, I turned off the stereo in the corner that was so busily dropping the bass. Silver jumped, his hooves losing their beat, and flicked his head towards me in such a way that the goggles he had been wearing flew up his forehead and lodged themselves comfortably in his mane.

"Oh, Dissy. Hey there." He glanced at the stereo to ensure it was still there.

It should be noted that Dissy is _not_ my name. Dissero is. It's just a familiar he picked up from my parents. Normally I wouldn't respond to it, but as a longtime foalhood friend, I let him slide.

"Morning, Silver. How are we doing?" I asked him. My ears were still ringing, but I was used to the sensation.

"You mean afternoon, right? S'all good, though… we seem to be losing some engine output. I presume our mechanically minded fillies were debating on the best course of action, yeah?" The pegasus grinned, leaning to one side to eye an abstractly placed gauge.

"Yeah. Stormslider won, I think."

"As she should. It's her job, after all. She does it well, despite the trouble. Mind bringin' me a snack? I haven't eaten since soup this morning, and sitting here staring at the walls is hard work."

"Beat you to it," I said, floating the plate I had brought to him. He grabbed it with a wing and tucked it neatly by his shoulder.

"Thank our fine chef for me." He stuck his snout into the plate. As I left, he flicked his music back on with his tail.

Ω Ω Ω

_I've always disliked moments like this…_

The vast majority of my crew's time was spent lounging. All we really had to do was fly, after all. We had an engineer, Stormslider, but all she ever had to do was fix the engine. Once it was in working condition, she wasn't really needed unless a particular burst of speed was required. Bursts of speed aren't really high in demand in the trading business, and I wasn't trying to set a world record or anything like that. Ember worked on other myriad machines and devices, but she also had just a maintenance role unless she was tinkering with something in her free time.

Cleaver's only real job was to cook and save us the hassle of arguing over who was the worst chef. When he wasn't preparing some massive meal, he relaxed and drank his vodka. As for myself, I walked around and gave them orders, but if nobody had any jobs to do I had no orders to give. Even Silver Feather had told me that ninety percent of his job as a pilot is staring at gauges.

We were all in our usual positions. Ember was brooding over her lighter and some complex geometric puzzle in one corner, deep in thought. I lay on a couch next to a window, reading some historical fiction set in the Lunar Wars. Cleaver relaxed at the bar, lazily humming some Stalliongrad folk tune to himself as he sipped from his bottle.

Stormslider was sitting in the opposite corner from Ember. She had her eyes closed, with music playing loudly enough through her headphones to serve as entertainment for the whole room. She had deep blue fur, with an unkempt mane and tail made up of a mix of lighter blues and reds. The ruby pendant on her necklace swung back and force as she bobbed her head. Luckily she didn't listen to annoying music.

_What we really need is… some excitement._

I still fondly remembered the days of my venturesome foalhood. Silver Feather and I used to have wild journeys together, only some of which were imaginary. We fought pirates, explored strange new lands, and led the legions of the Princess into battle.

We had become airstallions in the hope of living those adventures for real, but they had always just been pipe dreams. _Things didn't go exactly as planned, either…_

Now I was stuck behind a desk, smiling false smiles at falsely smiling faces in an attempt to negotiate an extra bit out of a deal. It was some consolation that I still got to travel Equestria with exotic goods from every province, but it still wasn't the life I had hoped for as a colt.

Suddenly, an abnormal groan shook the ship. The normal easy swaying motion of a well-piloted airship abruptly transformed into a rough vibration.

Ember and Stormslider immediately perked up, putting away their respective forms of entertainment. I could see each of the rival mares racing to mentally figure out what had gone wrong, who could be blamed for it, and who was going to have the skill to fix it first and best.

"Oy, Dissy!"

I briskly rose off my seat, leaving the book where it had been lying between my hooves. I could finish reading later.

"What happened?" I asked, making my way into the cockpit. A slightly annoyed Silver Feather was busily tapping at a gauge and holding onto a half-turned wheel.

"Well, I can't say for certain, but my expert opinion says that that piece of manure we welded onto the hull in Canterlot is falling off. It's bucking up the ship's aerodynamics. Get one of the mares to fix it, yeah?" he said. "Maybe I'll take a nap or something. We'll have to stay hovering till it's fixed or the hull's gonna get all ripped up."

"Ah, horseapples," I said. "I better go tell them before they kill eachother over who's to blame." I could already hear the beginnings of a fight brewing in the lounge. By the time I got downstairs, Ember was searching for the magnetic boots she used to traverse the hull, and both the mares were sporting goggles. _When it comes to competition, they sure do dress fast…_

Ember approached me expectantly. "Hey, Dissero, where are the mag-boots? I'm going out to check the hull."

Stormslider stepped in. "She's the one who put it on last time. I told her, 'add extra reinforcement to the rear edge,' but she wouldn't do it. Let me handle it, I have wings anyways." The pegasus slid her goggles over her eyes and made for the hatch in the main hallway of the ship, near the cargo bay.

Her fiery competitor jumped in the way. "Look, I told you the first time that extra reinforcement would've bucked with the ship and that it was gonna fall of no matter what, remember?" she explained. "Dissero, now would be a great time to show me the mag-boots."

Silver Feather glided down the staircase. "Fillies, c'mon. Why don't you both go?" He jabbed a hoof in Stormslider's direction. "I'm sure that if _you_ defer to our _mechanic_ who's here to _fix the ship_, your aid would be greatly appreciated." The blue pegasus bristled, but said no more. He trotted past the mares, satisfied that the matter was settled.

"Try and be more assertive, yeah?" he whispered to me as he passed.

I let out a tired sigh. "Go on, then, you heard him." Ember and Stormslider exchanged suspicious glares as they turned to the hatch.

In the kitchen, Cleaver found where his vodka had rolled off to during the shaking and let out a small exclamation of joy.

Ω Ω Ω

I stood in the cockpit eyeing the Manehattan skyline, silhouetted by Celestia's sun as it set on the horizon. The city was situated on the Marissippi, which flowed all through Equestria, and also home to one of the few bridges on the river suitable for trade caravans by land. Furthermore, small airships docked there from several local settlements. It was an important stop on my routes, and not just because of the plentiful bits I made off the zapapple trade.

We soon reached the Manehattan Skydock: a tall, thick tower with several aerial piers sticking out on each level like a metallic porcupine, hanging over the nearby port. Beneath it, ponies were hard at work loading and unloading boats, transporting goods between warehouses, and trying to cut the perfect deal in their quest for coin.

With night approaching, we hardly had to wait before one of the few remaining pegasus guides flew up and directed us to an empty pier. Silver eased the ship into position, and more of the local pegasi flew close with ropes ready to moor us to the tower. He turned off his music, flicked his goggles up into his mane with a smooth head motion, and nodded. We were ready to go.

We headed down into the lounge, where the rest of the crew were waiting. Stormslider and Ember both had on their personal saddlebags, and Cleaver waited by the hatch with his vodka in hoof.

"It's too late to do any trading," I announced. "Silver and I are going to go renew my license. We'll be back and locking the door at midnight."

"I need to go pick some things up. I'll find a club to hang out at for a few hours before I get back," Stormslider said. I nodded. She had mentioned something earlier about replacement parts for the engine. She trotted outside.

"I will follow engineer. Perhaps will find trinket to buy as well." Cleaver took another swig of his vodka and stepped outside. No doubt he thought a crate of vodka to keep him going another week would be the perfect trinket. _How the hay is he always so sober?_

Ember stood alone, hesitating momentarily as she debated her choices. She was clearly still angry with Stormslider, and I doubted she wanted to roam the crowded city all alone. She turned to me.

"Guess I'll go with you two, then," she said.

She followed me and SiIver out of the airship, and we walked across the thick metal pier to the central tower. I looked down on the city, orienting myself with my destination. It never paid to get lost in Manehattan.

I stopped before a small booth jutting out from the tower's structure. A young, and by the looks of it extremely bored, clerk accepted my license and squinted at it. I felt myself tense as he clicked his pen out and made a scribble on a paper by his side. Yawning, he hoofed the license back and waved us on to the elevator.

After a short ride down to the surface, we emerged into the trade district of Manehattan. I wrinkled my nose as the smell of fish assaulted my nostrils, drifting off the boats in harbor and overpowering any other scent that dared to resist. Warehouses dominated this part of the city, with tired stallions pulling carts filled with goods in and out of them, rushing to complete their jobs before the sun set. A few well-dressed ponies made their ways around the carts, walking as fast as they could without losing the laid-back, friendly air they needed to cut another deal.

I led the way at a brisk pace. Silver Feather followed close behind and Ember brought up the rear, eyeing the road nervously whenever we passed a crowd. We soon put distance between us and the tower, and the traffic began to thin. The buildings became less colorful and more run-down, and the ponies we passed began to lose the shine in their coats.

The sky darkened as we slipped down a dim alleyway, stopping before a shady staircase. A heavy and imposing metal door awaited us at the bottom, spotlighted by the rusty little lamp that hung above it. I raised a hoof and knocked once. The metallic bang echoed up and down the alley as we waited.

The small peephole on the door slid open violently, revealing an annoyed pair of eyes. They glanced over me for a few seconds. They disappeared. A long, intricate series of clicks and bangs sounded from the other side of the door. It swung open slowly.

A heavy and imposing stallion stood on the other side. He didn't seem very pleased by our presence. He waved us in with the air of a merciful god. As Ember began to cross the threshold, he stepped in her way.

"Who's she?" he asked. He narrowed her eyes at her as if he had just spotted her kissing his daughter.

I turned. "She's with me," I said. Ember stood her ground, glaring at the stallion. _Should've seen this coming. She hasn't been here before._

The stallion eyed her suspiciously. He stepped aside, returning to the heavy and imposing pose he liked to take next to the door. Ember trotted inside defiantly, sticking her nose up as she passed him. He closed the door, turning his gaze to take in the rest of the room like it was a blight upon Equestria.

"Thanks, Bite," Silver said. His comment was ignored with extreme prejudice.

With the conflict solved, I led the way forwards. The room was dim, with most of the light coming from the neon lights that blinked and flashed across the floor, matching the heavy bass beat that shook through it. Ponies gambled in every corner, loudly exclaiming at a fall of the dice or a turn of the cards. A group of stallions in business suits exchanged masked threats over a table as they eyed the dancing crowd that filled the far half of the room distastefully. A circular bar surrounded a series of raised platforms, each one holding a couple pretty mares dancing suggestively, much to the approval of the watching stallions below.

Silver led the way through the crowd, using his wingspan to break a path. Ember stayed close behind him, eyes down, flicking her lighter on and off furiously. We came up to a simple door on the far side of the room, where we were greeted by a pair of reproachful, rugged bouncers.

"We're here to see Masque," I said. The two stallions frowned down upon us from atop their muscular necks, opening the door and stepping aside like a pair of carefully sculpted glaciers.

I took the lead as we crossed the threshold, emerging into a simple hallway. The efficient lighting contrasted harshly with the darkness of the club, and only the bass leaking through the wall destroyed what could have been a peaceful silence.

Ember shook herself as the door shut, standing up straight and stepping away from Silver, who she had been practically hugging during the walk through the club. I walked down the hallway, past a door that was busily radiating a squeaky thumping, with my two crewmates behind me.

My ears twitched as I heard the sound of a scuffle further down the hall. Without warning, the drywall exploded outwards. The rubble was quickly followed by a wide-eyed pony who seemed just as surprised by his ejection as we were. Silver fluttered his wings, leaping back just in time to avoid impact.

I looked down awkwardly. The pony looked up painfully.

A heavy and imposing stallion lumbered through the doorway, closing it behind him with surprising gentleness. Ignoring us, he stepped past the new hole in the wall, grabbed the groaning pony with a wing, and dragged him away.

"And don't come back!" shouted a mare with one hoof out the door.

Her accent quickly identified her as a native of Prance, and her expertly coiffed green mane and neatly combed yellow coat hinted at an uncommonly acute sense of fashion. Two contrasting masks, one laughing and the other crying, served as her cutie mark.

Her eyes passed over us, and she immediately switched from angry to welcoming. "Ah, Diss_ero_! What a _pleasure_ to see you!" she said. She extended a hoof to sweep me into her room.

"Hello, Masque," I said. I allowed myself to be pulled in.

Her apartment was, to say the least, colorful. Costumes, hats, and clothing with enough variety to rival the crowd at the Summer Sun Celebration were strewn all over. Not a single inch of floor was visible through the mess, and the walls weren't much better off, with the only bare patches being the door and the freshly made hole. A rectangular shape I took to be a bed occupied one corner, buried underneath reds and yellows. Next to the bed, a hideous rainbow blanket was draped over what seemed to be a lamp, if the light filtering through it was to be trusted.

"So I presume you're here for your new license, dearie?" she asked. She swaggered to the one remotely neat part of the room: a desk covered in little pieces of plastic, glue, scissors, and other crafting supplies.

"Yes." I eyed a shade of blue that seemed to be developing life. "I won't be staying long, though. It's late."

She smiled. "Yes, I've already got it done! It's around here somewhere," she sang as if finding small pieces of plastic in an organizational apocalypse was one of her favorite pastimes.

_Then again, she probably _does _end up doing that a lot…_

She began trotting around the room, sifting through the upper layer of fabrics. Ember slid up to my ear. "She doesn't seem like she'd be good at… something like this," she whispered.

Masquerade's ears twitched as she turned to Ember, wearing a bright smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Is that so, dearie? I suppose you wouldn't know. One doesn't get much recognition as a master of disguise." A dangerous undertone lay beneath the words, offering a silent threat before it slipped away.

"Why, back when I was still into thieving I once stole a dragon's hoard by disguising myself as discarded tape! You can only _imagine_ what –" She suddenly tripped over a stuffed snake, landing headfirst into a giant chicken.

Ember stifled a giggle.

She bounced back to her hooves as if nothing had happened. "And then, I took the money from selling the loot and disguised my vacation home as a peacock! That dragon was searching for _years_ and never found me! Oh! No… maybe? Nope!" She laughed, tossing a few ID cards aside to be lost to ponykind forever. Or at least until she had to find them again.

Ember looked up from the disturbing blue filly doll at her hooves. "You disguised a _house_ as a _peacock_ and _yourself_ as _tape_? Is that even possible?"

"Of course it is, dear! You just have to start thinking _as the box,_" she said. "Ooh, I think I know where it is!" She climbed over a fallen showcase and picked up an envelope on the bed-shape, pulling it out from beneath an overturned cash register full of purple socks. "Here we go!"

I levitated the envelope to my side. "Thanks again, Masque."

"Not a problem, dear! Why, if you had actually gotten a _real_ license, I'd be out of my favorite customer!"

I grinned half-heartedly. "Heh, yeah. I'll be back after I make some sales tomorrow to chat," I said. Silver snatched the envelope from my magic and fished out a pilot's license with his picture on it.

"That'll be fine, Dissero. I can't wait to tell you about this time last year I used a cup of tea as an –" She was interrupted as a pile of ridiculous hats collapsed, burying her alive.

Ω Ω Ω

We retraced our steps out through the club. The bouncers frowned as we passed, expressing their divine disapproval at our existence.

Stepping out of the alley, we emerged into an open plaza, surrounded on all sides by rundown buildings and occupied by a pitiful attempt at a park. The few citizens on the streets moved past at a quick canter, eyed greedily by groups of rough-looking ponies huddled together in the moonlight. I nodded to Ember and Silver, briskly heading towards the skyport where ship and safety alike awaited.

Unfortunately, we were intercepted.

As we trotted down a narrow shortcut, a burly stallion stepped out of a side alley and blocked our path. The flutter of wings announced the arrival of two pegasi landing behind us. We were surrounded.

"Horseapples," Silver hissed, flaring his wings. Ember pulled her lighter out and flicked the fire on. I took a step back, and we formed ourselves into a compact, defensive triangle.

"Hold it!" one of the pegasi called. We froze, each one of us glaring at one of them.

A much smaller pony, his horn barely visible in the dark, emerged from the shadows. He sported a dirty bowtie and old fedora, commanding an aura of respect despite his size. A greedy gleam shone in his eyes.

"Youse merchants?" he asked. I nodded. _Hopefully all he's looking for is bits…_

"Mmm." He looked me over. "I got some cargo I need shipped. Real quiet-like," he said.

_I see where this is going._ I prepared myself to refuse. Silver slid his goggles down with a quick nod of his head. Ember's hooves slid over the pavement.

"It's good stuff. Need it brought to Harmony City. Why don'tcha be a lil' neighborly and ship it for me, hrm?" the little unicorn sneered. He smiled with mock friendliness.

"We don't smuggle," Ember growled. The unicorn frowned.

"Yeh don't smuggle, just use false licenses, eh? Strange…" He narrowed his eyes. "Wouldn't want anypony getting' wind a' that, would we now? Doubt they'd hold up to heavy… _scrutinization_."

I glared at him. Masque was good, but she couldn't get my name on the list of licensed captains kept by the Royal Aerial Society. _An anonymous tip would make things difficult, at the very least._

I weighed my options. We could probably take them. They only had one pony more than us, and the little unicorn didn't look dangerous. Still, I wasn't much of a fighter, and the big stallion in front of me looked tough. _Celestia knows if that unicorn has any fighting spells…_

"What kind of cargo are we talking about here?" I asked. I had some smuggling experience. One run wouldn't hurt. If it was a commodity I knew, I could handle it without too much hassle and avoid the fight.

"That don't matter to you, now. All youse gots to know is it's light, small, and pays well. There's a buyer at Harmony City who'll pay nice, and da customs there won't even stop you. Just sneak it outta here and don't get caught on the way there," he said.

Silver Feather stepped up to my side, bristling. "I dunno about this, Diss. It's too easy. There's gotta be a catch."

I furrowed my brow, deep in thought. Ponies didn't usually blackmail others to help them make a profit. Silver looked like he was ready to pounce on the big stallion; he had some experience with fighting. I tensed, preparing my words to refuse and my body to fight.

A shadow flew by, barely visible out of the corner of my eye. With a furtive glance up, I saw more pegasi on the rooftops, watching, at the ready in case I resisted. I had no choice.

"Fine, we'll do it," I said.

Silver flicked his goggles up, shooting an appalled look to me, while Ember continued to glare. The unicorn smirked confidently, nodding to the pegasi on the rooftops.

I figured we could get it over with quickly and cleanly. Besides, a little adventure never hurt anypony, right?


	2. Ch 2: Welcome to Harmony City

Omega by Goldenwing42

* * *

Ch. 2: Welcome to Harmony City

**Omega**

**Chapter 2: Welcome to Harmony City**

I stood in the cargo bay, eyeing the little metal crates before me.

"_Don't open 'em. Don't even touch 'em till you get ta Harmony City. If even da slightest ting is wrong when ye arrive, ye'll have da law on yer tail."_

I turned, stepping out into the hallway and then the lounge. The music that usually leaked from the navigation floor above was strangely absent, replaced by a loud, persistent, banging. I flopped back onto a couch, bending my neck to get a better view of the landscape passing below.

The clop of hoofsteps reached my ears, and I raised my head to see Stormslider approaching. She sat on the couch next to me.

"Brings back memories," I said.

She nodded. "Don't worry. We'll be done with this soon."

"It's not all bad. Things have been pretty dull ever since we quit smuggling." _Maybe we'll get some excitement out of it._

"Smuggling is dangerous. Surely you haven't forgotten the time we were shot down?"

I frowned. "I think we came out of that better than before. We would've had to get rid of that dinky little airship soon anyways."

"Just be careful we don't end up outside the law again," she said. "I didn't graduate from the Royal Air Academy so I could run from royal patrols with you and Silver."

I chuckled. "Trust me; I'm trying to avoid that."

She looked up, eyeing the ceiling above us. The banging had stopped. "What could they possibly be doing up there?"

As if in answer, Silver Feather came tumbling down the stairs with a stupid grin painted on his face. He flicked his goggles up into a mane even more spiky than usual. "Dissy! Storm! We've done it!"

Stormslider cocked a brow. "What?"

Ember tripped down from above, falling on Silver clumsily. She lifted a weary head and squinted at her surroundings. "Marvelous," she whispered.

"Dissy, come look!" Silver beckoned to me with a hoof, pushing Ember off of him with the other. Hesitantly, I approached the staircase. _What in Equestria did they do?_

Silver flew behind me, pushing his head against my rump and forcing me upwards. Surprised, I barely managed to prevent myself from falling upon landing on the navigation floor. I looked around warily. "What is it?" I called.

"In the cockpit!"

My eyes focused in on the door at the end of the room. Closed.

Ever so cautiously, I stepped up to the door. I paused, searching for defects. Traps. Anything out of the ordinary. I pushed the door open. My jaw dropped.

The cockpit was unoccupied. It looked exactly how it was supposed to, to my suspicious surprise, with the exception of a vastly intricate network of _ropes_ winding through it. They were everywhere, integrating every lever, chain, and somehow even button into their dominion. Ropes took mind-boggling routes in, out, over, and between walls. If the cockpit had been a confusing room before, it was now a puzzle that would challenge even the most analytical of detectives.

"Isn't it great?" I jumped at the sound of Silver's voice in my ear.

"Silver, what is this?" I asked.

He giggled like a foal. "It's an autopilot, Dissy! Ember helped me make an autopilot! Now I can hang out with you guys instead of sitting up here all day!"

"Oh," I said. "Well, that's good, I guess."

Ω Ω Ω

"Hah! Good round!"

I flinched as Cleaver yelled his satisfaction, reaching out to pull the pile of chips in the center of the table closer to him. Frowning, I silently pushed my cards forwards. _Another loss._

"Let's go, Storm!" Silver said, grinning. "One more hand before we break."

Stormslider swept the cards up off the table and shuffling them back into her deck. With the smooth confidence of plentiful practice, she dealt two cards each to Silver, Cleaver, and I.

I squinted down at my cards. _King and Ace of magic._ _A good hand._ I pushed a portion of my pitifully small collection of chips forwards to stay in the hand. With a flash of blue fur, the flop slid out onto the table. _Seven of magic, Five of magic, Jack of harmony._

I bid a few bits, confident I could get a flush. All I needed was one more magic card. Cleaver frowned, but called anyways. Silver, however, raised, pointedly fixing me with a hard, emotionless stare.

_This won't go well for you,_ it said. How he managed to put so much message and so little emotion in a stare, especially while wearing goggles, confounded me. I called, and Cleaver folded.

Storm dealt the turn. _Five of destiny._ _Lot of good that does me._ I tapped a hoof to symbolize a check. Silver bet five bits. I hesitated, but called nonetheless. _Just one more magic card…_

Silver let a tiny little smile onto his visage. I ignored it, determined not to let him bluff me out again.

Storm flipped the river onto the table. _Nine of magic! A flush!_ I tried to contain my emotions, pushing ten bits forwards in what I hoped looked like a last ditch bluff. Silver stopped smiling and cocked his head at his cards. He raised me another ten bits. I called, broke out into a wide smile, and slapped my hand onto the table face-up.

"Take that!" I exclaimed. "A flush!" I eyed the huge pot in the middle of the table greedily, already planning my future hands. Leaning against the couch behind me, I looked to my side and grinned at Ember smugly. She raised her eyebrows, quietly nodding towards the table. My eyes followed hers, focusing in on the cards that Silver had silently slid forwards.

_A Six and Eight of magic. _He had gotten a straight flush on the river. _He beat me. Again._

I looked down at the five measly bits that remained before me. They looked so tiny. So insignificant compared to the hoard that blocked my view of Silver. Cleaver and Storm chuckled, exchanging humored glances. Silver offered me an irritating smile.

"Nice try, Dissy," he said. "but I think you need some more practice." He got to his hooves and flicked his goggles up. "So how about we take a break, and when we come back we can start betting on coin tosses or something?"

I stayed seated as Silver, Cleaver, and Ember headed for the bar, the stallions chatting enthusiastically about the card game while the mare followed behind quietly. Stormslider collected the cards, neatly arranging them into the deck.

"It surprises me that you're still so bad at cards," she said.

I shot an exasperated glare her way. "It's not that I'm bad. It's that he's good."

She raised a brow, shuffling the deck absentmindedly. "You've known him longer than any of us. I imagine he would've taught you something by now. I learned how to play at least competently when we were still at the Academy."

"You never play against him though," I said.

She grinned slightly. "Yes. I decided that dealing was easier. And more fun than losing all of my bits."

Ω Ω Ω

The rest of the trip passed in much the same way. After losing a sizeable amount of bits at the poker table, I begged Stormslider to take my place and teach me to deal. The games passed remarkably slow as I fumbled to shuffle the cards correctly, but it was better than going broke.

It took us a week to reach Harmony City. I had been relaxing in the lounge, idly levitating a deck of cards over my head, when the city's major landmark came into view: a massive wall of rolling thunderclouds, stretching up as far as I could see and off into the horizon to either direction, serving as a backdrop to the city itself.

I had heard of the Cloudwall, of course. It was impossible not to, with all the traveling that I did. Still, I had never actually _seen_ it before. I shivered as I took in the behemoth, thinking of the stories. At least two hundred airships had fallen to its might, struck down by lightning storms and ripped apart by harsh winds as they tried in vain to discover what was on the other side. Even here, at Harmony City, where the Wall was weakened enough by age for the most skilled pilots to fly through, a dozen wrecks could still be seen lying under the clouds. It was too dangerous to retrieve them. Those who died amongst the storms stayed in them for eternity, their bodies left to the elements.

From what I knew, the Cloudwall had surrounded Equestria as long as anypony remembered. Even Princess Celestia was uncertain about its origins.

Harmony City was situated on the base of a peninsula, jutting out through the Cloudwall. The lack of water weakened the massive storm as it passed over the land, forming a narrow corridor where a talented airship crew could pass through.

If anything could be said of the city, it was that it capitalized on its placement. Its architecture was devoted almost exclusively to trade with the exotic lands outside Equestria. Even from our distance, miles away, towering skydocks could be seen rising up to touch the clouds, each one surrounded by a swarm of airships waiting for their turn to dock.

As we came closer, I began to pick out more detail. The city was practically bursting at the seams, with a plethora of new buildings halfway-built along its edges, all vying to get a share of the profits. Abundant skydocks gave every district the ability to trade directly with the aerial merchants that filled the sky. The three roads leading up to the western side of the city, opposite the Cloudwall, seemed to come alive with the colors of all the ponies coming to and fro. The central part of the city, protected by a tall wall, was so darkened by the shadows of the ships above it that it was impossible to pick out any detail.

Pushing myself off the couch I'd been relaxing on, I trotted up to the navigation floor and entered the cockpit.

"We're here?" I asked.

Silver nodded. "Yeah. I'm gonna park us near one of these smaller skydocks. Hopefully somepony will come out to talk to us."

After about half an hour of floating near one of the smaller skydocks near the city's edge, staring awe-struck at the Cloudwall, a pegasus flew out to greet us. A knock sounded on the hatch.

I made my way down to the lounge and into the hallway which connected it to the crew quarters, engine room, and cargo hold. Ember, Cleaver, and Stormslider were already there, waiting in front of the hatch. Clearing my throat, I opened the hatch. A clipboard-wielding pegasus hovered on the other side.

"Wat'cha carryin'?" she asked.

I hesitated, suddenly realizing that I had no experience with the black market in Harmony City, or with how one went about as to announcing the wish to take part in it.

"Uh, stuff. From Manehattan," I added. _Hopefully she knows what I mean._

"What kinda stuff?"

"Y'know. Stuff." I glanced at Cleaver with a silent plea for help. He knew more about the underground here than I did.

The big stallion lumbered up to the door, almost pushing me aside with his girth. "We are here to deal in local black market," he stated.

"Ah, okay." With a flap of her wings, the pegasus alighted inside the ship. She looked to Cleaver expectantly. "Lemme see what'cha got, then."

"He is Kaptain," Cleaver said, nodding in my direction. The pegasus raised a brow at me doubtfully, but nonetheless fell in behind me as I led the way to the cargo hold. Flicking on the light, I waved a hoof at the boxes.

"Some guys in Manehattan told us you'd be interested in these," I said.

She nodded, scribbling a note on her clipboard. "Right. Good. You're gonna want ta make for the Central Domestic skydock, in the central city."

"What's inside these?" I asked. "I'm just curious."

"Don't you worry about that. Do what yer told, get yer pay, and get out." She began to walk out, before stopping and glancing back. "Just gimme half an hour to tell 'em you're coming."

She left, and we waited. Silver set the ship to hover, and we each passed the time trying not to look nervous about our first black market trade in two years. Except Cleaver. He remained implacable.

After the allotted time had passed, we began the approach on the designated skydock, a smaller one just inside the shadow of the main swarm of airships, dwarfed by the titans of architecture that towered above it. I didn't see any other airships docked on it. Stormslider tapped my shoulder with a wing.

"Silver wants to see you," she said.

It didn't take me long to enter the cockpit, unusually devoid of music. The silence was eerie, broken only by the occasional hiss or clank of the airship's machinery. "What's up?" I asked.

"I don't like this," the pilot said. "Look, some other ships are drifting in around us. Surrounding us. We won't be able to escape if something goes wrong."

I squinted through the cockpit glass, picking out the ships forming a vague circle around us, and the shape of the cannons on their sides. "They're probably just watching for cops." _I hope._

I heard a noise behind me. The rest of the crew had joined us.

As we neared the skydock and details emerged, it began to look more and more dilapidated. Visible rust covered every surface, and some of the piers looked ready to fall off, or even completely gone.

"There's no way those piers can hold an airship," Stormslider observed.

"Yeah," Ember agreed. "That structure hasn't had maintenance for years."

"I have bad feeling on this," Cleaver rumbled.

"Would you all shut up, please?" I hissed. I felt myself beginning to panic. Looking out the cockpit glass, I saw a group of pegasi flying towards us. A chill ran down my spine as I saw the sunlight reflecting off the blades strapped to their feathers. "Ah, horseapples. Get ready for a fight, everypony!"

Cleaver shook his head, reaching for his bottle. "Is no use. Too many to fight. No way to escape."

Silver turned around, opening his mouth to offer a retort, but was cut off by a determined knocking on the hatch.

"Open up!" a gruff voice commanded.

Ember grabbed me, pushing me back against the wall. "What the buck have you done to us?" she hissed.

Stormslider pulled her off. "Ember, calm down! Now isn't the time."

"How about you shut the buck up and come to grips with reality?" Ember shot back. "We're all gonna die if we don't do something!"

"You don't know that! They have no reason to kill us yet!"

"Besides the fact that we know about their operation!?"

"We can work something out!"

"Open the bucking door before I have to open it for you!"

The mares fell silent, cowed by the roaring coming from just outside the hatch.

"I'll get it," I said.

Slowly, I stepped down the stairs and stood before the hatch. My crew followed behind me. I flinched at the metallic echo of another barrage of furious pounding. My crew positioned themselves around me. All eyes were on me.

I creaked the hatch open. "Yes?" I asked politely. Like a complete idiot.

The stallion on the other side fixed me with an evil grin. "Welcome to Harmony City," he said.

And then his hoof slammed into my face, and reality slipped away.

Ω Ω Ω

I woke up, lying in a bed and full of pain.

It wasn't a very comfortable bed, either, which I supposed was a good thing. If I was dead and woke up on a bed it would probably be like sleeping on a cloud, which pegasi always told me was wonderfully soft.

I opened my eyes to the sight of a neglected ceiling, with a few rays of filtered sunlight passing over its numerous chips and holes. A shadow moved at the edge of my vision. I tried to move my neck to get a better view.

_Bad move._ A wave of nausea overcame me, eliciting a pained moan. I decided to leave physical movement for later.

"Oh, you're awake!" a gentle mare's voice said. An earth pony stepped into my limited line of sight, wearing a tired but reassuring smile. She looked exhausted, with a worn magenta coat and a dirtied red mane. "We thought you'd be out longer. You seem like a delicate pony."

I tried to ask the mare what had happened. Where I was. Where my crew was. But all that came out was another pathetic moan.

"Don't worry, you're in good hooves," she said. "My name is Phoenix Down."

Ω Ω Ω

"What happened?"

"You've been tricked, sold into slavery for somepony to make some extra bits," Phoenix Down answered. She stepped into another room. I heard the sound of running water.

"Where am I?"

"The inner district of Harmony City. You'd better get used to it. You'll spend the rest of your life here." She returned with a damp towel on her back. Crouching over the only other patient in the room, she began to clean his wings.

"Who's that?" I asked.

"Your pilot," she said.

My heart sunk. I rolled over, fighting off the nausea to get a better look at Silver Feather's softly breathing body. "How?"

"He tried to fight those pegasi in the air. He fell. I don't…" she hesitated. "His left wing is bad. I don't think he'll ever fly again."

My body went weak. I fell back, staring up at the holes in the ceiling blindly. A terrible feeling of dread, of disgust, of _shame_ welled up within me.

Because of me, Silver Feather would never fly again. My best friend, who had always been there for me. In a desperate attempt to distract my darkening thoughts, I turned to ask more questions.

"Who are you?"

"You can call me Nix. Lots of ponies get hurt in this place, and I heal the ones that I can. Make them good and ready to work again. Keep them from dying. This is my home."

"How did I get here?"

"Your crew brought you two."

_Of course. My crew._ "How are they?"

"Fine. Physically, at least. I don't know how they're dealing with the… change. They should be out working. It's their first day."

_Oh, Sweet... no. No, don't think about it. _I stared at the ceiling, mind blank, mouth open. A few minutes passed. "How long have I been here?" I asked.

"Just one night." She walked over to a set of drawn curtains and pulled them open. A sliver of sunlight peeked around the silhouettes of the massive airships hanging in the sky.

"And I'm some kind of slave now?"

"Yes."

"Any chance of rescue? Escape?"

"I'm afraid not, Dissy. I've lived here my whole life. Other ponies have been here longer. Nopony has ever gotten out. We all die in here."

"How is that- how is that possible?" _Surely the Princess, the Royal Guard! Somepony has to know about this!_

"The Inner City is a well-kept secret. The Outer City handles all the trade with Equestria. Nopony knows the truth."

Just then, I came to the full realization of the sheer _weight_ of my mistake. My crew, the ponies that had become my family, that I'd been closer to than anypony else for years, were now slaves. And it was all my fault.

Silver would never fly again, by airship or wing. Stormslider would probably never get to tinker with the cloud engines she loved. Ember and Cleaver might be lucky enough to end up working as mechanics or cooks, but never as anything more than a slave to another's wishes.

_What must they think of me right now?_ I had just practically thrown their lives away. Destroyed their dreams. Realized their fears. In a world where everypony was happy, everypony fulfilled their destinies, and everypony got along, I had managed to find the one city that enslaved ponies and tossed them into it.

_I should've fought, back in that alley in Manehattan. Ember was ready. Silver was ready. I was the only one that wanted to avoid a conflict._ Even if they had gotten me, Silver could've flown away, and Ember was never an easy mare to contain. They would have been free.

I had been selfish, afraid for my own hide when it was theirs I should've been looking out for. _Why did I try to take a shortcut? Was the ten minutes it would've saved worth all this?_ I could've waited for daytime before I went to see Masquerade.

Rage boiled within me. A terrible, all-consuming rage at the world that would do this to my friends. At myself, for letting it happen. Where was Princess Celestia? _How could she let this happen?_

I raised a hoof, punching the wall by my side as hard as I could.

"Buck!" I screamed. The wall shook from the impact. My body trembled with emotion. It wasn't enough. I needed to shout my fury out at the world, to let all the emotion out with a barrage of violence, but I was too weak.

"Hey, stop that!" Phoenix Down ordered. She tossed a sharp stare my way.

Slowly, I lowered my hoof to reveal a new crack in the wall. A sudden exhaustion washed over me. I barely had the energy to speak anymore.

"How do you know my name?" I didn't remember telling her. _And if I had, I wouldn't have given her my pet name._

"Your pilot told me, when the rest of your crew brought you two in. He was delirious, but awake."

"Hmm. Okay." I returned my gaze to the ceiling, examining its pockmarked surface absent-mindedly. "Tell me more about this place." I hadn't lost all hope yet. I couldn't lose hope yet. _Maybe we can still get out._

"Many years ago, an earth pony named Robber Baron took control of the city." She rinsed the towel in a bowl of water. "Nopony knows exactly how he did it, but it's likely that he started off as just another merchant, and used gold and underworld connections to either buy or replace every official that resisted him. He built the Inner Wall, and turned the Inner City into his own personal work force."

"Why doesn't the rest of the city do something about it? How has nopony found out about this yet?" I asked.

"It's a well-kept secret. Outer City ponies think the Inner City is a glorious metropolis, where only the richest tradesponies are allowed. They even throw parties, whenever one of them is selected for the 'privilege' of joining us."

"And the Princesses? Don't they ever visit?"

She shook her head. "No. In all my life, I've never seen them anywhere but a poster."

"What about the ponies in here?"

"The Baron is cruel, Dissy. He'll freely kill you if you disobey him. And those are the lucky ones."

I lay back down and closed my eyes. A life of servitude? _Great._ My crew was to spend the rest of their lives in this dark corner of Equestria, slaving their health away in the literal shadows of the world's wealthy.

My ears twitched as the door opened, and Ember stepped through.

I shrunk away from her angry glare. The fire in her eyes was dampened only be the sweat soaking her coat. With an angry flick of her tail, she turned to talk to Nix.

"How're they?" she asked.

"Dissy should be fine," Nix answered. "Silver Feather needs more time."

"Great. C'mon then, _captain._"

I climbed to my hooves and fell in behind her as she stepped back into the hall. "Where are we going?"

"I'm showing you to your room."

She began to walk, half-heartedly stomping her hooves like a mare that was too tired to act as angry as she wanted to. We ascended six flights of stairs in absolute silence, with nothing but her fury to fill the void.

"Ember, I- "

"Shut up."

I closed my mouth. She was angry enough as it was. I didn't want to provoke her, lest she turn around and try to set me on fire.

She was practically shaking when she led me down another hallway, past simple unlabeled doors draped in shadow. Our hooves clopped against the wooden floor, lit only by moonlight leaking through the single window at the end of the hall. Suddenly, she stopped.

I stopped behind her, confused. She showed no sign as to whether this was my room, or hers, or if she was just too tired to walk anymore or she just wanted to talk. A few silent moments passed.

"Ember," I began.

With a sudden whirl of movement, she twisted around and bucked the door, hard. It broke straight off its hinges, collapsing inwards to bang against the floor loudly.

"Save it," she said. "Enjoy your room."

She took a dozen more steps down the hall, opened a door two rooms down from me, and stepped through.

Standing there, I had never before felt so ashamed. I'd known she would be angry, but that hadn't made it any easier. _Will the rest of my crew be like that? Silver Feather?_

I jumped as a wizened old chuckling sounded from behind me. Twisting around, I was treated to the sight of an aged stallion, pulling at his pipe as he sat in the wooden chair placed up against the wall.

"Mare problems, eh?" he croaked.

Wordlessly, I turned to face my empty doorway.

Stepping over the threshold into my prison, I levitated the door back into position.


	3. Ch 3: Necessities

Omega by Goldenwing42

* * *

Ch. 3: Necessities

**Omega**

**Chapter 3: Necessities**

"Good morning, sir."

Robber Baron turned around, pulling the cup of tea from his lips as he greeted the newcomer. "Ah, good morning."

Pen Knife bowed ceremoniously, the fire in the hearth casting his flickering shadow over the varied collection of priceless furniture in the room. Sofas made from fabrics that only a select few Equestrians even knew existed, paintings of vistas thousands of miles away, and display cases containing strange technologies Equestria had not yet discovered decorated the room. It could be said with certainty that, out of every room in all of Equestria, Robber Baron's personal lounge was more exotic and foreign than any other. The only thing in it that could be called Equestrian was the very pony who owned it.

Baron took a final sip of his tea. He set the cup down regretfully, wishing he could've had just a few moments longer to enjoy the taste. _But alas, such is the life of the richest pony in Equestria._ He smirked.

"Okay then, Pen, what've you got for me?" he asked. Rising from his seat, he walked past the visiting unicorn and began out the door.

Pen Knife followed behind. "Would you like the items in need of your attention first, sir? Or the general reports?"

Baron mulled over the decision briefly as he walked. "General reports."

The aide nodded, levitating a sheaf of papers out of the folder on his back. "Very well then, sir." He cleared his throat. "The shipyard's report that the prototype chassis was recently finished, and they will be sending it out for test runs shortly."

Baron smiled, ignoring the sights of the city as he walked past a window. They had gotten old after the first decade. "Excellent. How long until it will be ready for shipping?"

"A few months, sir."

"Good. Carry on."

Pen Knife adjusted his glasses. "Reports show that our recent gem deal with the Jackal is proving to be extremely lucrative. Besides the increase in gold flow, the Jackal himself is also quite pleased with the trade."

"Good. Invest half of the new income into public relations. Take a third and put it towards the politicians. Save the rest."

"Very well, sir." The conversation stalled momentarily as Pen scribbled something on the clipboard floating by his side. "Also, sir, it seems that the rebels raided one of our warehouses last night."

Robber Baron arched a brow. "What did they take?"

"Moonstone, sir."

Baron came to an abrupt halt, nearly causing Pen Knife to bump into him. He twisted his neck, a dangerous look in his eyes as he turned to face the other pony. "How much?"

"A whole shipment, sir."

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and counted to ten. "An entire shipment?"

"Yes, sir."

"Have we reacquired it yet?"

"No, sir."

"You know how I _hate_ wasting money, Pen."

"Yes, sir."

Baron returned his eyes forwards, looking down upon his city. There was an entire shipment of moonstone hiding down there, out of its rightful place. And it was _expensive_. It required contacts amongst the Moon Princess's highest lieutenants, a daring smuggler to pull it out from under her nose, and a skilled moonsmith to put to use without her knowledge. Such a theft was a _massive_ financial loss.

And if there was anything that the Baron hated in this world, it was an investment that didn't return.

"Arrange an execution, Pen. Do we have any rebel prisoners?"

"Yes, sir."

"Two of them, and their families. If you can't find a family, pick another one," Baron said.

He walked away without another word. The only sound was the scribbling of pen upon clipboard.

_Nobody steals from Robber Baron._

* * *

"_You've ruined my life."_

"_There are some acts which cannot be forgiven."_

"_This is all your fault!"_

My eyes shot open as I was jolted awake, second-hoof sunlight dripping in through the curtained hole in the wall trying to impersonate a window. I heard a dulled wooden knocking, followed by shouting, somewhere in the hall outside my door. I lay in bed for a few more moments, my mind blissfully blank.

A sharp knock brought me back to the present. I rolled over in the bed, just in time to see my precariously balanced door slam into the floor.

I squinted up at the muscular indigo earth pony that stepped over it. His lip curled as he caught sight of me.

"You!" he shouted. "Up! Foundry duty starts early, and I won't have my shift late for some sulking piece of first-day shit!"

I returned my gaze to the window, blearily trying to evaluate what time it was. I was so tired. Everything was happening so fast.

The bed shook with the impact of a sudden kick from the stallion, knocking both me and the mattress down to the ground.

"Up!"

_Buck you._

I remained on the ground, silently resisting.

"Ugh, not this shit again," I heard him mutter. I felt a sharp pressure on my neck as he pulled me up with his mouth. My hooves scrabbled over the floor as I fought to regain my balance.

"Work starts at _dawn_, six days a week! You will return to your lodging at _sunset_! You will call me Boss! You will report to Foundry Two _every_ damned morning or I will personally drag you out into the street and _whip your flank!_ Now go!" He punctuated the order with a heavy stomp.

To my embarrassment, the stomp startled me into stumbling forwards. I glared at him as I walked out into the hall, meeting his stern gaze with as much defiance as I could muster.

Several other ponies were making their way up the hall, towards the staircase. They all looked just as exhausted as I was. Their coats were dull and their eyes empty, in a way that I had never seen before amongst the happy, pastel-colored ponies of Equestria.

Boss shoved me from behind, sending me stumbling forwards. I caught myself on the opposite wall and, resisting the urge to turn and try to tackle the larger pony, fell in with the others.

I was swept downstairs and out into the street by the ponies around me, where we all joined a large crowd gathering in front of the building. Squinting upwards, I got my first look at my new home. It was a plain construct: a brick-and-mortar building with curtained holes marking each room. A simple white "12R" was painted on it, just above the door.

"Move!"

The crowd lurched forwards, spurred onwards by the command. Together we shuffled forth through the streets of the Inner City. The simple residential buildings around us were soon replaced with the architecture of industry: steel mills, ironworks, foundries, and manufacturing plants. Smaller groups of ponies broke off from the main crowd as we passed them, filtering into their respective workplaces.

I looked up, and was treated to a sight unlike any I had seen before. A dozen massive skydocks towered above me, each behemoth connected to its neighbors by sturdy steel bridges. The sky was almost completely blocked out by the fleet of trade ships floating above the city; what little light reached the Inner City itself was forced to slip between the ships, putting the district under a state of perpetual twilight.

As I returned my gaze forwards, I noticed guard towers built around the path. Each one held a pair of ponies within, their faces hidden by grim, dark suits of armor. I shivered as one of them gazed down on me. There was something inexplicably… _unnatural_ about them.

"Halt!"

I almost bumped into the mare in front of me as the crowd shuffled to a stop. Glancing around, I suddenly realized that most of the crowd we had begun with was gone; only about thirty ponies remained.

Before us was a large brick-and-mortar building. A pair of tall smokestacks poked out of its roof, identifying it to be of industrial purpose. I stood up to my full height, straining to see the words painted on its front over the shoulders of the pony in front of me.

"Foundry Two," I read aloud.

The line advanced quickly, and I soon found myself standing before Boss, frowning at me through the glass of the booth he occupied.

"Name?"

"Dissero."

He made a fierce scribble upon something out of my view. "Race?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. _Can't he figure it out himself? _"Unicorn…"

Another scribble. "Previous occupation?"

"Merchant."

One last, vigorous scribble. I began to doubt the legibility of his writing. "Step aside and wait."

I complied, removing myself from the line to allow another stallion to advance. He gave his name, waited while Boss marked something on his paper, and then continued onwards, around a corner and into the depths of Foundry Two.

I noticed another pony standing by my side. He had an inky black coat, and was drawn so far into himself, huddled against the rough wall behind us, that I almost didn't notice his wings. He glanced up at me shyly, looking away when he realized I saw him.

"You new here?" I asked.

He nodded. He looked young, like a colt fresh out of the home. We were both relatively small compared to the large, built-up ponies that lived here, but he was even scrawnier than I was. An image of a paintbrush trailed by stars adorned his flank.

"My name's Dissero," I said.

"Moon Dream," he replied.

I looked around. The line was almost gone. "How'd you end up here?"

"I came to draw the airships," he said. "I got closer than I wanted."

Boss's harsh voice cut through the air. "You two, over here!"

The line was gone, leaving only Boss, now outside the booth, tapping a hoof impatiently. I stepped forwards, and Moon Dream followed nervously behind.

"Welcome to Foundry Two!" he barked. "You will be working with the furnaces! Come with me!"

_Is the constant yelling really necessary?_ He marched down the hallway, and we followed into the central structure of the foundry. It was dark inside, with narrow slits supplying sparse daylight. Large casts were stacked against one wall, and giant iron cauldrons hung suspended from the roof, slowly lumbering around the room as a few ponies labored over the pulleys attached to them. Two large doors on the other side of the building rumbled open as I followed Boss, revealing a pair of massive pony-drawn carriages, the stallions pulling them straining against their yokes.

Boss led us down a narrow flight of stairs tucked into a corner. We emerged in a much more compact room, somewhere beneath the main one. Eight brick furnaces were aligned in two columns of side-by-side pairs, with two ponies waiting expectantly beside each pair.

Boss stopped besides an unoccupied pair. "You two will be operating these furnaces!" he explained, still shouting. He pointed to me. "You will supply each one with coal!" His hoof turned on Moon Dream. "You will supply them with air!"

He narrowed his eyes, glancing over us one last time before marching back to the stairs. He shot a look over his shoulder, a snarl already prepared for the rest of the room.

"Get to work!" he roared.

I jumped at a sudden bang by my side. A chute in the wall I hadn't noticed before had slammed open, dumping a pile of coal onto the floor.

Gingerly levitating a piece to look at it closer, I suddenly met eyes with Moon Dream. I saw my own misery reflected back at me. He opened his mouth to mumble something.

"I suppose we should get started."

Ω Ω Ω

The sharp shriek of the whistle rang in my ears.

The hard stone floor rose up to meet me. I lay there, drenched in sweat, and vaguely aware of Moon Dream collapsing by my side. My magic sputtered and died in much the same way that my body was trying to. A few pieces of dropped coal rained upon my coat, adding to the already thick layer of coal dust on it.

I stared straight forwards, panting, and cherished the next few seconds of peace. My ears registered the sound of hooves clopping past. _How can they still be standing?_

A shadow cast itself over me. With a gargantuan effort, I rolled over and looked up, to be rewarded with the sight of Boss grinning down at me.

"Hard work, eh, newbies?"

If I hadn't been so exhausted I would've frowned. For a moment, I thought I'd heard a distant second cousin of sympathy.

"Take tomorrow off. You'll be working every other day until you can manage two days without dying. You'll get used to it," he told us. "If there's one good thing about foundry work, it's that it makes you hard."

The journey home was almost as hard as the work itself. The sun had both risen and set during my time in the foundry, and my tired hooves stumbled over every bump in the path as I dragged myself back to my building. Moon Dream staggered next to me. During the day we had determined that his room was just down the hall from my own.

By the time we reached our rooms, we were too tired for any kind of real goodbye. We exchanged half-dead glances of acknowledgement. He opened his door and stepped through.

I stepped over my door and collapsed into bed, not even bothering to levitate it into place.

Ω Ω Ω

_Oh, sweet... damn._ My whole body ached like it had never ached before. Even my horn ached. I couldn't even levitate my sad excuse for a blanket off of me without summoning a massive migraine all too reminiscent of being punched in the face.

_Maybe... yeah. No magic for today._

I stumbled out of my room to find the building mostly deserted. _Everypony must be out working._ I spied the old pegasus that had laughed at me when Ember bucked my door down, sitting in his chair and smoking a pipe.

The old pegasus looked up and cracked a toothy smile my way. "I see Sword Breaker has elected to give you a day off," he laughed. "Hard first day?"

I nodded uncertainly. _Who's this guy?_ "Why aren't you out with the others?"

"Hah! Work, an old pony like me!" he exclaimed. "I'd break my back out in that foundry. Sword Breaker may be tough, but he cares. He's just as much a slave as the rest of us." He winked at me as he said the last few words, taking a long pull at his pipe.

"Who's Sword Breaker?" I asked.

"Oh, well he probably introduced himself to you as 'Boss.' He likes that kind of thing."

He released a puff of smoke, leaning back contentedly. A shaft of sunlight lit up his face, revealing a veritable army of wrinkles and spots.

"You're the oldest pony I've seen in this place so far," I said.

"And probably the oldest you'll ever see, until the day I die!" He chuckled. _That's starting to get on my nerves._

"Why doesn't anypony make you work? I didn't think the Baron was the kind of pony to allow retirement."

"He's not, boy. The good Baron would never let a pony rest as long as his hoof can still be raised, and even then he finds a use for us." He smiled to himself. "But when you've survived here as long as I have, you find ways."

I nodded. "Suppose I'll go look around then." I began to make my way down the hall.

A cane flashed out, slapping me on the knee as I tried to pass him. "Ow!" _Where the hay did he get a cane?_

"Now listen here, son. I've heard about you and your crew. Unfortunate business, but don't you worry: they'll come around. Friends are hard to find here, and sometimes harder to separate. What's your name again?"

"Dissero." I rubbed my knee with my other leg. _I really don't need ancients beating me with sticks right now._

"Ah, yes. Dissy! I remember now." He chuckled again. "My memory is not what it once was."

_Remember?_ I had never told him my name before in the first place, let alone the pet name Dissy and my parents used. The old stallion looked behind me and smiled. "Ah, Moon Dream. I see you too have been graced with a free day."

"Yes, sir," Moon Dream said. He stepped up to my side.

"Always sad to see a young pony like yourself caught up in this hell." The old stallion released a series of hacking coughs before taking another pull at his pipe.

"Y'know, that's not very healthy, sir," the younger pegasus said.

"Bah, don't worry about me. I would've been dead years ago if it wasn't for some lucky placement." He winked at us, and shifted so we could see his cutie mark: a glowing hot ingot. "I have a talent for metal work, you see. Kept me alive longer than anypony else in the foundries. I've lived through generations here, seen many of these skydocks being built. A few years off my life won't hurt. Oh, pardon my manners!" He took another pull on his pipe. "M'name's Old Ironhide."

"Pleased to meet you," I said. Moon Dream murmured agreement.

"Hey, where is Nix's room?" I asked. Old Ironhide chuckled.

"It's not too hard. You go down to the second floor, and her room is the second door on the right as you leave the stairwell," he said.

I excused myself, leaving the two pegasi to talk amongst themselves. I followed Ironhide's directions to a nondescript door on the second floor and knocked lightly.

"Come in!" Nix called. I entered to find her tending to Silver Feather's hurt wing. The pegasus was awake, and his face scrunched up in pain. He bit down on the towel in his mouth as Nix set the broken bone in his wing and tied it in place with bandages and tape.

Silver spat out the towel. "By Celestia, that hurts!" he hissed. "And itches!" he added, rolling his back.

"Stop that, and try not to scratch," Nix ordered. "Actually, you'd better not move your left foreleg much at all," she said after a moment's thought, easing him back into a lying down position on his bed.

Nix looked up to see who her visitor was. "Oh, hello Dissy," she said. "Silver Feather is well enough to talk now, as you can see. I'll be right back." She got up and walked into the adjoining room, leaving me alone to face my best friend.

Silver fixed me with a hard look, similar to the kind he'd used on me at the poker table. I approached him meekly, trying to figure out how to apologize, already anticipating his rejection.

"Silver," I started, but he cut me off with a wave of his hoof. _Here it comes._ I was about to lose my best friend.

"Save it," he said. I was doing a lot of apology saving recently, it seemed. He stared at me for a full minute, and then he said, "I already got my revenge."

I cocked my head, unsure if I should be happy or depressed. _What?_

Suddenly, he broke into an evil, playful grin. "I was conscious as I was being brought here..." he started, "and I made sure that everypony thought your name was Dissy."

"W-what?" I had been expecting anger. Sadness, scorn, contempt. This was literal foal's play.

I gathered myself together enough to smile. "Thanks."

I sat by his side, and spent the rest of the morning there. Nix, Silver, and I talked about whatever came to mind, when she wasn't tending to him or the one other, unconscious patient in the room. Every now and then she asked for my assistance, and I gave it freely. It was my only way to repay her.

Eventually, I dozed off. Despite last night's sleep, I was still exhausted, and Nix's room was full of unused beds.

I was roused by the sound of heavy hoofbeats out in the hall. Nix came out of the side room to eye the door, ears twitching curiously. Silver was in the midst of a deep, herb-assisted slumber.

Suddenly, the door burst open.

Three ponies rushed in, carrying the moaning form of a fourth between them. "Phoenix Down!" one of them called.

Nix rushed to the corner of the room where her satchel was placed. "Place him on the table! Gently!"

The ponies cleared a space on the wide metal table that dominated the center of the room and placed their companion upon it. They all wore thick, dirty clothes and caps. One of them had a strange device slung about his neck, vaguely stick-shaped and covered with strange runes. "He's been shot!"

"What happened? Give me some space." Nix brushed the others away as she bent over the moaning body. Two of the dirty ponies went to watch the windows, while the one with the rune-covered thing stayed near the table.

Nix beckoned to me with a flick of her tail. I leapt to my hooves. Grabbing a pair of scissors in my magic, I carefully cut away his clothes. I wrinkled my nose in disgust. The wound was bleeding badly, and the fur around it was matted with dirt. Nix grabbed a damp towel and began to gently clean the filth.

"We were smuggling supplies when the Baron's ponies ambushed us. We had a few casualties, and most of us escaped, but there're some too weak to take back. We need you to care for this one until he's good enough to make it home," the pony with the rune-covered device said. I gave the wounded pony something to bite as Nix poured cheap alcohol over the wound, eliciting a muffled scream.

"I'll care for him. You'd best go before you're found here," Nix said authoritatively. "We don't want anypony else hurt."

The two near the windows pulled back, filing out into the hallway. The third followed after them, stopping in the doorway to speak. "We'll send someone to check him every Sunday." Then he was gone, as suddenly as he appeared.

"Dissy, hold him down," Nix ordered. She reached for a pair of tongs, and I put my weight down on the pony's chest. He moaned in agony as Nix reached into the wound with the tongs, biting the towel so hard I thought he might pop a vein, and passed out.

The tongs came out red, with a bloodied stone sphere covered in runes between its fingers. Nix dropped it into a nearby tin.

"What's that?" I asked.

"It's a bullet, Dissero," Nix said as she continued to remove shrapnel from the wound. "The Baron's ponies shoot them out of rune guns. They're kinda like hoof cannons. One of the ponies that was in here had one."

"How do they work?"

"Ancient lunar magic, from the Nightmare Wars. We don't know much about it, as the Baron keeps it a closely guarded secret. What we do know is that unicorns can store their magic in runes written on moonstone, to be released with command words from other ponies. The Baron knows somepony real high up who gets him the moonstone."

"And who were those ponies?"

"They were rebels. Surely you didn't think that the Baron could be running Harmony City like this for so long without some kind of resistance?"

_Huh._ "Are they recruiting?"

Nix shot me an alarmed look. "Surely you aren't thinking of joining? Rebels die every day, Dissero. If you think life under the Baron is hard, you can't imagine life _against_ him."

"I can't just sit by and let him own me," I pushed.

She glared at me. "Nopony lives long as a rebel, they all die eventually. If you join them, your fate will be no different." She turned back to her work, looking away from me. "If you truly want to throw your life away, then feel free to sign up."

"How?"

She shook her head. "I'm not telling you how to kill yourself. I'm sure if you walk around outside they'll run into you eventually."

Ω Ω Ω

_Wow, it's dark out here._

I walked up to another alley, peering down it curiously. The sun was setting now, and with the stars blocked by the airships above, only the sunlight that reflected off the taller buildings reached the surface.

_Where are they?_

I squinted, straining to pierce the darkness. Nothing. _Come on, did you really think you could just walk out and find rebels in one night?_

My ears twitched at a scrabbling sound to my left. I turned, just in time to be knocked over by something that ran between my legs.

"Hey!"

"Get back here!"

"Stop it!"

I jumped to the side, narrowly avoiding being trampled by four thickly clothed ponies. They galloped past me, into the alley, and were swallowed up by the night.

"Hey, wait!" I ran after them. _They look like rebels!_

I darted through the pitch-dark alleys, following the sound of chasing hoofbeats. I heard a loud metal clash, the sound of scrambling hooves, another shout, and then silence.

It was so dark that I could barely see. I slowed to a stop in an empty courtyard, unsure of where to go next. A pair of trash cans had fallen over and were knocking into each other in a corner. My ears twitched.

A rough pair of hooves wrapped themselves around my neck.

I gagged, gasping for breath as I waved my legs around haphazardly. Things started to go dark.

"Wait!"

I fell to the ground, my neck finally free to breathe again, retching. I rolled onto my back, to be rewarded with the sight of three stallions looking down on me.

"He doesn't look like one of the Baron's."

"I thought work didn't end in this district for another half hour?"

"Well, what's he doing out here then?"

"Well, he doesn't look like- "

"I'd like to join you!"

They stopped talking. A frown, a raised brow, and a grin looked down on me. I waved them away with a hoof to give myself some room to stand up.

"Who is it?" The fourth rebel, a mare, pushed her way into the circle. She eyed me over suspiciously. She was holding a struggling, grey-furred filly in her magic. "What are you doing here?"

I swallowed. _Here we go._ "I'd like to join the rebellion."

She raised a brow. "Well, you don't look like much, but... Just let us deal with this scrap and then we'll head for the safehouse."

The filly bobbed up and down. "Let go of me! I have to get to my brother!" She flapped her legs around wildly, as if trying to swim out of the magical grasp and escape.

"I'm afraid that's not possible, little one," the mare said. "We gave you a chance, and you didn't take it."

"I have to get to my brother!" the filly repeated.

"What are you doing with her?" I asked.

One of the stallions glanced my way. "She's a Baron spy. Seen too much, and since she didn't agree to join us..."

A second stallion finished for him. "We kill her."

I blinked. "Wh- what? You can't kill a foal!"

The mare fixed me with a hard stare. "We have no choice. It's the life of this filly or the good of the rebellion. We have no place to put her."

I gaped. "No! That's not right!"

One of the stallions pulled me aside. "Look here, recruit. The rebellion is the only thing here that's fighting back against the Baron. We can't afford to take any risks. She has to go."

"No! Find another way!"

He frowned. "There is no other way. She thinks the Baron will give her her brother back, and she won't give in to us. She _needs_ to be silenced."

"Listen to yourself!" I growled. "Aren't you supposed to be helping these ponies? You can't kill their foals!"

"There are certain unfortunate _necessities_ that must be seen too. Are you sure you have the drive to join us?" The stallion punched my shoulder lightly. "Have you got what it takes to serve the greater good?"

"Well, yes, but-"

A high-pitched squeal rang through the night.

I looked at the rebel before me, terrified. He nodded at me grimly, patted me on the back, and began to walk back to the rest of his group. My eyes followed after him.

I focused in on a trickle of blood, and a foal-shaped shadow on the pavement.

I turned and ran as fast as I could.


	4. Ch 4: Last Chance

Omega by Goldenwing42

* * *

Ch. 4: Last Chance

**Omega**

**Chapter 4: Last Chance**

"Now, let's see if you can get this one. Hrm... what is the name of the earth pony leader that helped unite the three tribes?"

"Chancellor Puddinghead!"

Robber Baron smiled. "Yes, that's right."

He reached out a hoof and rustled the filly's mane. "Now go along and pack your bags. You have a long journey ahead of you."

"Yes, sir, Mister Baron!"

The filly nodded enthusiastically and snapped into a mock salute. With a giggle, she twisted around and ran down the hall, disappearing out of sight around a corner. The Baron turned to Pen Knife, who was standing by his side with his ever-present clipboard.

"How much longer until that one's ready, Pen?" he asked.

"The filly, sir? Another decade, I believe."

"And what position is she being groomed for? Baltimare?"

"Minister of Commerce for Baltimare, sir."

"Ah, excellent." Baron took a moment to mull over his mental notes. "Is the current minister with us?"

"No, sir. Claims to be unbuyable."

"Well, make sure his assassination is clean."

"Yes, sir." Pen Knife made a small scribble on his clipboard.

_How the hell does that clipboard of his work?_ Robber Baron had never once seen him turn to another sheet, and yet somehow he managed to always have a relevant page on it. _Boggles the mind._

Baron glanced out the window. "Is the execution ready?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Give the Inner City a day off. I don't want a _single _one of them to miss it."

* * *

Without any real conscious direction, my panicked hooves eventually brought me to the closest thing I had to home: my little apartment in building 12R. I crashed through the still unsecured door and tossed myself into bed.

_How could they kill a filly?_

Ω Ω Ω

I woke up the next morning to the pleasantly surprising sound of laughter out in the hall.

Rolling out of bed, I took a minute to stretch. My body still ached, despite not having to work yesterday. _I hate this place._

Poking my head out my room, I glanced up and down the hall. Old Ironhide was in the same position as always, squinting down upon a few mares playing at cards from his chair. Levitating my door back into place, I trotted down the hall.

"Morning," I said.

The mares looked up briefly, nodded acknowledgement, and returned to their game. Old Ironhide greeted me with a puff of smoke. "Morning, Dissy! Have you heard the news?"

I cocked my head. "No. What's happened?"

He frowned. "The good Baron has decided to grace us all with a _holiday_."

I blinked, taken aback by the foreboding tone. "Well, that's good... right?"

One of the mares coughed loudly. The other two exchanged condescending looks as Ironhide shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not. The good Baron only grants us his '_holidays_' when he wants us to attend something. And when he wants us to attend something, it's never something good." He punctuated the sentence with a meaningful pull on his pipe.

"Oh." I ran a hoof through my mane, suddenly self-conscious. "Well, thanks for telling me then. I'll be off."

None of them offered a farewell, and I left them in silence. I climbed down the stairs to Nix's floor, found her room, and knocked twice.

"Come in."

"Hey, Nix. Just thought I'd come and-"

I stopped, halfway in the room. Silver Feather and Nix were there, as I had expected, but so was Stormslider. My mind debated whether or not to slip back out before she noticed, but it was too late anyways. She had me now, eyeing me with that cool, collected look of hers.

"Hello, Dissero."

_Might as well get this over with._ I stepped the rest of the way into the room and shut the door behind me. "Hey, Storm. I just wanted to say-"

"Save your apologies and listen," she interrupted. _At this rate I'll have enough apologies saved to open a small business._ I glanced at the clock and mentally noted the time. No doubt she had prepared a debilitating series of accurate, detailed jibes.

"I'm a rational pony. I like to judge ponies by their intentions. I know you had good intentions. You didn't want this; you're not evil." Her brow furrowed with well-controlled anger. "As such, I will forgive you, and instead direct my anger at the bastard that runs this city, and has me cleaning the only sewers in all of Equestria full of disgusting, foreign _shit._"

I blinked. I smiled. _Perhaps Old Ironhide is right after all._ Storm gave me a curt nod and turned to Nix.

"Do you have a towel I can borrow?" she asked. For the first time I noticed the dampness dripping off her mane.

Nix grabbed a neatly folded towel and tossed it to her. "If you have sewer duty, you'll have to keep it." She looked to me. "And Dissy, Old Ironhide tells me you have foundry duty. You'll need this."

She hoofed me a plain, yellowish-white bandana. I held it up quizzically.

"To tie around your muzzle," she added. "It'll protect you from the smoke and fire."

"Ah, of course." I draped it over my neck experimentally. "I don't know how to tie one of these."

"I'll handle it." Nix crossed the room and tied the bandana around my neck before I could open my mouth to protest.

"Uh, thanks."

"No problem. Can you help me with this poultice?"

Ω Ω Ω

_Clang! Clang! Clang!_

My ear's twitched. I drew the curtains on the nearest hole in the wall aside and glanced down the street. "Nix, what is that?"

"Whatever the Baron called the holiday for is about to happen. We all need to get to the display yard," she said. She grabbed a fresh roll of bandages and wrapped it around Silver's bad wing. He mumbled something irritably.

I narrowed my eyes. There was something coming around the corner, down the street. _What is that...?_

As it rounded the turn and came into full view, I realized what it was. A small airship, slowly working its way down the street. A bell was fixed to the top of it, being rung by a stern-looking unicorn.

As it passed by, Nix put her supplies back into her bag and stood up, stretching. She looked down to Silver. "Get up. You can walk now, as long as you take it easy, and you're better off not staying here."

He climbed to his hooves, rolling his shoulders experimentally. "Why not?"

She frowned. "The Baron doesn't like it when we miss things. Sometimes he raids buildings, and if he finds somepony skipping..."

Silver nodded. "Right, I get the picture." He flourished a hoof towards the door in mock ceremony. "Shall we go, then?"

The street was crowded. Every pony in the Inner City lived in the same compacted residential district: twenty buildings over five blocks, and they poured out of their residences like trickles meeting a river. The bell ship passed over me, casting my world into a second layer of shadow even deeper than the one cast by the tradeships above. I scanned the crowd, looking for my other crewmembers. In the distance, a team of the Baron's police broke into a building.

The sun was just starting to set as we arrived at the display yard. It was the only truly open space in the Inner City, which usually made an uncomfortably efficient use of space. The wide, circular yard marked the very middle of Harmony City, gently sloping down from the edges. At the bottom of the yard, where it flattened out, a wooden scaffold had been erected. The hooves of hundreds of enslaved ponies kicked up a thick cloud of dust, making it difficult to see. I coughed. Despite being called a yard, there wasn't a single blade of grass in sight.

On the opposite side of the yard, surrounded by a clear and cleanly paved courtyard, was the Baron's Tower. I craned my neck, awed by the sheer height of the behemoth of architecture. The ships were thicker here than anywhere else. The shadows were, too.

I looked over to Nix. She had a rag wrapped around her muzzle. I coughed again and pulled my bandana up, waving the dust away with a hoof. "What are they going to do?" I asked.

She met eyes with me. She looked worried. "It looks like an execution."

My eyes widened. "An exe- a what?"

"RESIDENTS!"

The crowd quieted. I looked back to the scaffold as the dust settled. A grey pegasus paced the length of the makeshift stage.

"A CRIME HAS BEEN COMMITTED."

I stretched myself to my full height, straining to see over the ponies in front of me. A bespectacled yellow unicorn was standing in the scaffold's shadow, horn glowing. _He must be amplifying the voice._

"TWO NIGHTS AGO, ONE OF THE BARON'S PERSONAL WAREHOUSES WAS RAIDED BY A GROUP OF THUGS CALLING THEMSELVES 'REBELS.' THIS ACT CANNOT GO UNPUNISHED."

I heard movement behind me, and turned around. Two lines of the Baron's police were marching through the crowd. I stumbled as the crowd was pushed and shoved to clear a path.

"THESE SO-CALLED 'REBELS' MUST LEARN THAT THEIR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. THEY HAVE STOLEN YOUR FOOD AND ENDANGERED YOUR LIFE. THIS CANNOT GO UNPUNISHED."

The double line emerged from the inner circle of the crowd. Between them was another line of ponies that I hadn't noticed before. Stallions, mares, and foals. Silver cursed under his breath.

"THESE NINE RESIDENTS, WHO ONCE ATE THE BARON'S FOOD AND SLEPT IN HIS HOMES, WERE CAUGHT WITH THE STOLEN GOODS. THIS CANNOT GO UNPUNISHED."

I narrowed my eyes. _No, that can't be right... there are foals in there!_ There were only four adults; two mares and two stallions. The other five were just foals, stumbling as the police pushed them, eyes wide with fear.

I leaned towards Nix. "I don't understand. There are foals down there," I whispered.

She nodded somberly. "They're just examples. The Baron doesn't care if they're truly guilty."

Silver scratched at the ground angrily. "Guilty?" he spat. "The Baron is the only guilty one here."

"AS SUCH, THEY HAVE BEEN SENTENCED TO DEATH, BY THE JUSTICE OF THE BARON."

The nine were on the scaffold now. Nooses had been placed around their necks. The foals were sobbing uncontrollably. Even from a distance their shaking was visible. The adults stared forwards in silence.

With a wooden rattle, the bottom of the scaffold fell away. One of the foals, a small colt, shrieked as he fell. In an instant the nooses tightened, and he fell silent. In the quiet of the yard, the sound of the nine victims gagging carried far and clear. Not a single pony in the crowd moved a muscle.

Silence fell. The yellow unicorn made a mark on his clipboard.

Ω Ω Ω

Time passed. Moon Dream and I grew stronger, hardened by our work in the foundry, and the days began to run together. I woke in the morning, marched to Foundry Two, donned my bandana, and slaved until past sundown.

Dream and I grew close. Our mutual hardships drew us together, and soon I began to see him as a little brother of sorts. On Sundays most of us were given a day off to rest after the week's toil, and he and I spent hours in the small courtyard behind our building. He drew the airships on whatever rags he could find, using pieces of charcoal and chalk that had been smuggled in or scavenged from factories. He even drew a makeshift map of Equestria on my bandana. I began to wear it more often. It became more of a part of me, like Silver's goggles and Storm's necklace.

Ember eventually came around. Storm and Silver managed to convince her that I truly was sorry, that I hadn't meant for any of this, and that being mad at me would only make things worse and, honestly, it would make more sense to be mad at the Baron. I don't know if she completely accepted it, but she did fix my door as a token of friendship. It was nice to have a working door.

With the help of Old Ironhide, I made contact with a rebel smuggler and got hold of a bottle of what Cleaver would call "the good Stalliongrad vodka." I knocked on his door and presented it to him one Sunday, and after sweeping me up into a grateful bear hug, I was forgiven. If only all of my problems were so easily solved.

My life fell into the pattern of an Inner City slave. I worked Monday through Saturday. On Sunday I relaxed. There was a roughly two-hour long period where my crew, Moon Dream, and I were all free at once, and we spent it relaxing in the courtyard. Sometimes Nix joined us, when she wasn't busy. We spent the day complaining about our jobs and daydreaming about escape. Sometimes it even felt like being free. Still, a passing patrol of the Baron's police always yanked me back to reality.

"That one's my favorite," Moon Dream announced one Sunday. He pointed with his pencil, at a relatively small ship orbiting the Baron's Tower. It didn't look familiar, and it wasn't docking or departing like every other airship was always doing. "It has such nice aesthetics."

He returned to his pad, a pitiful collection of bound together papers that Stormslider had found in the sewers and saved. Silver peered up into the sky, squinting as a beam of sunlight landed on his face.

"She does look pretty slick," he said enviously. "Look at those wings. And thrusters, too. Bet she can pull some sick tricks." His wing had stopped healing after two weeks, but it still wasn't any good for flight. It never quite closed at the proper angle, and it could only be extended stiffly for some quick, pained gliding. A pang of guilt ran through me as I looked at it.

"Our old ship was nice," I said. It had been _my_ ship, after all. _Sure, we pooled our bits to get it. But my name was the one on the false license._

"Our old ship was worth nineteen bits," Ember stated. "Trust me, I was there when we scrapped it." Silver and Cleaver laughed.

Stormslider lowered her magazine. "I wonder what kind of engine it has," she murmured. She was always reading magazines on Sundays. She found a few in the sewers every now and then.

And then Ember had to return to her room. Her job began at midnight, and she needed to start sleeping early in the day if she didn't want to risk punishment. Cleaver left soon after, mentioning that he would be expected to pull supply carts for the next day's work soon. Silver climbed to his hooves, claiming he had an appointment, and trotted away. Stormslider wrapped up her magazine and headed for the street with some words about the night shift. Moon Dream glanced up at the setting sun and decided to go scavenging for supplies. Left alone, I made my way to Nix's room.

I became a sort of assistant towards Nix. I helped her care for stable patients, and watched over them when she went out for supplies. The rebels ran a black market in some factory too decrepit for working, where ponies traded whatever they could find. The rebels gave out smuggled goods, speaking about "destabilizing the system." Useful bits of trash drifted in through the sewers. Sometimes things would fall off the airships. Those were always worth a lot, if they didn't break.

Nix and I talked about whatever came to mind. We discussed recent events, and plotted escape routes and coups. It wasn't anything serious, of course. We didn't have any real hope of getting out alive.

More time passed. I glanced at a calendar and idly noted that almost two months had passed. I looked in a mirror. My coat was getting dull, though it still wasn't as bad as those who had been here for years. Moon Dream heard rumors about the rebels planning something big. His work was becoming popular; makeshift paintings now adorned the halls and walls of building 12R.

Cleaver hadn't lost his impeccable ability to find alcohol along with his freedom. Stormslider told me that he had managed to gain access to some kind of underground bar. I wasn't sure whether or not to be surprised. The Baron didn't approve of alcohol, or really anything that he didn't give us, and as such the rebels decided that running bars helped to destabilize the system, and set one up. Cleaver talked his way into discovering it. Apparently he was surprisingly charismatic when booze was at stake. The rest of the crew often went there on Sundays, but I wasn't much for drinking. Dream was too young, and Nix was too busy.

I was forced to attend a few more executions. Another hanging and two firing squads. Each time foals were involved, and each time the true culprits were replaced with pointless "examples." The second hanging moved me almost as much as the first.

After that, the affect started to wear off.

Ω Ω Ω

It was a Saturday. Besides the approaching relaxation of Sunday, there wasn't much else to say about it. Nothing out of the ordinary to warn me about what would happen. Perhaps if I had paid more attention, I might have seen something.

I was given the privilege of leaving the foundry early. Boss liked to give us each one day of early leave per month. Normally Moon Dream and I used ours on the same day, but for some reason I used mine that Saturday without telling him early. He was surprised, but since Boss made us tell him our day a week in advance, he couldn't do anything about it. I think Nix might have needed me for something, or perhaps I'd decided to go drinking with Cleaver.

I left the foundry in high spirits. As high as they get with the constant presence of the airships and the Baron's police. I looked up to the sun, trying to gauge the time of day, when-

_Boom!_

I was knocked to the ground with an explosive force. My horn jabbed itself into a rock, causing a jolt of pain to race through my body. My ears rang. I rolled around in a state of semi-consciousness, mind blank, overcome with confusion.

When I finally regathered my thoughts, I looked behind me.

Foundry Two was up in flames.

I sat there for a few moments, staring blankly. Then my mind kicked back into gear. I staggered to my hooves.

"Moon Dream!" I yelled as loud as I could, hoping against hope that he might come stumbling out of the flames.

Clumsily, I ran towards the burning building. "_Moon Dream!_" I pulled at a piece of rubble with my magic, but it was too heavy. I couldn't lift it. I couldn't focus. Another stab of pain ran down my side. I tripped and fell, vision blurring as tears welled. _He looked up to me. I was supposed to protect him. He was like a little brother._ I pictured him in the courtyard, pointing out an airship he liked as he sketched with his charcoal and scavenged paper.

I noticed the bandana, still covering my muzzle. I tore it off, staring at the map he'd drawn for me. Just like the old map I'd had, in my old airship. _Not quite accurate of course, and missing some important features, but..._

I was vaguely aware of ponies running frantically around me, screaming, but I ignored them. I don't know how long I sat there, gazing at the flames. Time slipped away.

"Dissero! Dissero!"

A small sliver of hope awoke within me. I turned around. "Moon Dream?"

Nix ran up and pulled me into a shaky hug. She looked over me, hooves searching for wounds. "I came as soon as I heard! Oh, I was so worried! Are you okay? Where's Moon Dream?"

I turned back to the fire, slowly. Silently.

She raised a hoof to her mouth. "Oh."

"Nix, what just happened?" I asked. She didn't respond. I jumped to my hooves, grabbing her and shaking her to get her attention. "Nix! What just happened?"

"It's the rebels!" she cried. "They're trying to cripple the Inner City, or draw attention from the rest of Equestria. They're blowing up buildings all around the industrial district!"

I gaped. "How do you know about this?"

"Old Ironhide told me as I passed him in the hall. He's known for weeks, but he hasn't told anypony."

Rage. Anger coursed through me. _That old pegasus killed Moon Dream. He's killed hundreds with his silence._ "Let's go," I barked. "We're going home. I'm going to give him a piece of my mind." _Or my hoof._

Nix followed close behind as I led the way to building 12R. Other fires raged across the city, contrasting against the sky of the setting sun. It seemed the rebels had planted bombs everywhere. I heard battle in the distance. Ponies screaming, pegasi crashing into the ground, and rune grenades detonating. Night came, but the sky was still red. I coughed as a gust of ash blew into my face. The ever-present airships began to evacuate, running for the safety of the countryside. One of the huge, towering skydocks that so defined the city toppled over, groaning, and crashed into the ground. The rebels must have killed hundreds of innocents with the bombs alone.

The route was longer than usual. We were forced to detour around streets blocked by battles, rubble, and paranoid police. It took us two hours to reach building 12R, eerily unchanged by the day's events. If it wasn't for the sound of fires burning and ponies screaming in the background I could have almost forgotten about it all.

I bucked the door off its hinges and stormed up the stairs. Nix trailed behind.

I burst into the hallway. The silhouette of Old Ironhide sat in front of a window at the end of the hallway, framed by a fire in the building on the opposite side of the courtyard. I charged forwards, shouting my grief.

As I drew closer, I picked out detail. The silhouette picked up color, and I found the old pegasus dead in his chair, a rusty old wingblade attached to a feather. Blood ran down his neck, puddling around his pipe on the floor.

_Coward!_

My vision went red. I began to tear the hallway apart, smashing my hooves through the weak drywall and magically tearing doors of their hinges. I focused in on the corpse, raising my hooves, ready to beat it into a pulp.

Nix jumped in front of me. "Stop it!" she shrieked.

I caught myself. _Calm down._ I fell into a sitting position, breathing heavily, hooves still raised. _This isn't solving anything._ I had lost control.

_Moon Dream..._

"Nix!" I grabbed her, pulling her close. "We can use this as a diversion! To escape!" _I need to distract myself. I can't think about it right now._

"I... I don't know..." Her eyes strayed to the body before us.

I was trying to think of words to convince her when Stormslider came flying up from downstairs. "Cap- Captain!" she stuttered, landing heavily. She squinted at me. "C'mere... we got shomthing for you!" she slurred.

_What?_ _Is she drunk?_ Then I remembered. Cleaver had arranged for the rest of the crew to drink with him today. Cautiously, I followed Storm as she stumbled down the stairs, Nix close behind me.

"You... you are gonna _like_ thish!" Storm bragged. She tripped on the last step as we reached the ground floor.

We stepped outside, and my jaw dropped.

Hovering in the street, quietly and somewhat leaning to one side, was Moon Dream's favorite airship. It was even more gorgeous from up close. And hanging out of a hatch near the bottom, looking down the street, was Cleaver.

"Kaptain! We have found you a ride!" he exclaimed. He reached out and swept me off my hooves like a foal, pulling me into the ship.

"Wait!" I shouted. He dropped me, and turned back to the outside. "Nix! C'mon, we can escape!"

She hesitated, looking back at the building that she had spent almost her whole life within, at the city she had come to call home despite its hardships, at the sky full of fire and airships full of armed ponies, shooting down at the rebels below.

Stormslider pushed her drunkenly from behind. "Lesh go, Mish!"

Nix jumped, startled out of the daze. Wordlessly, she galloped up to the hatch and leapt inside. I smiled at her, and she returned it nervously. Storm tumbled into the ship as Cleaver shut the hatch.

A door to the side led to what looked like a cargo hold. Cleaver led us up the stairs, past a recognizable engine room, and out the door at the top.

We passed through a short hallway into what looked like a building still under construction. Some thin walls, more for separation then structure, were placed about half-heartedly as if to outline rooms. We walked past them into an open lounge startlingly similar to my old ship in arrangement. At the far side of the lounge, against the front of the ship and behind a bar, was a kitchen area.

We went up one more story, using a thinner and shorter staircase between the half-done rooms and the lounge, and came out onto what I assumed to be the navigation level. A long, wide table filled the middle of the room. At the end of the room, past a short hallway, was the cockpit. It was much larger than the one in my old ship, with enough room for my whole crew to stand in it. And they were.

Silver was at the helm, goggles on, trotting about in a distressingly drunk fashion as he piloted a ship which, as far as I knew, he had never entered before. Ember was slouched in a corner, squinting at her surroundings and mumbling to herself, trying to light her lighter but lacking the sober focus needed to cast her spell. Storm leaned against the wall in the hallway behind us, smiling lazily. Cleaver stood straight, like he always did, as if he had not just taken part in a series of drinking that had left the rest of my crew nigh incapacitated, and Nix planted herself outside the cockpit, so out of her element that she could hardly move.

In the time that we had taken to climb the stairs up to this level, Silver had guided the ship up to a flying altitude. I gazed down on the city through the cockpit's bubble of glass. Sparse pockets of fire and fighting were spread throughout the city, leaving the space in between largely undisturbed.

I looked to Cleaver. "How did you get this ship?"

He gave me a knowing smile. "Kaptain, let it simply be said that the good Stalliongrad vodka gives a pony great heart and courage. But for record, it was Ember's idea." Silver and Storm nodded, murmuring drunken agreement.

"Did you steal this ship?" Nix asked incredulously.

"Well, yes. Did I not make this plain?" Cleaver replied. He sounded offended.

"Are we being chased?" I asked. _Please say no, please say no, please say-_

"Yesh!" Silver exclaimed. "Look, there'sh a few ships closing in behind ush now!"

My heart dropped. "How can we escape? The rebels have got the whole place up in arms. There's no way we'll be able to get out to Equestria."

"That'sh just it," Silver said deviously, a wicked grin stretching across his face. "I'll take ush through the Cloudwall! It'sh our last chance to get out of thish hellhole!"

I leapt forwards and grabbed him forcibly. "You can't be serious!? You realize that hundreds of ponies have died trying to cross that, sober and extremely well-prepared?"

"Yesh, but they weren't me," he bragged. I began to feel very much like a pony who, after the conductor of the train he was riding in fell asleep, was watching a very, very hard and fatal wall approach at an alarmingly fast speed.

Nix poked her head into the room bravely. "He's right, it's our only way out."

I turned on her. "Don't you be supporting this! I thought you wanted me alive!" _Don't panic. Don't panic. Don't panic!_

"Don't worry," she reassured me, "I've heard that pegasi inside the Breaks simply know what to do. Luckily, we have a pegasus pilot. But he should really wear a blindfold, or his eyes will get in the way."

_Celestia help me._ My heart was jumping out of my chest. "You want a _drunk _pegasus to fly an airship he has _no _experience with through the most _dangerous _path in Equestria, with a _blindfold _on?"

"Pegasi are the only things that can navigate the Breaks, and Storm is too drunk to even stand up straight. The Baron's ponies go through here all the time, we can too!" she argued.

Stormslider rose from her position to put in a comforting statement. "It'sh all good. Back at the Academy, boozsh hash only made him a more recklessh flyer."

"That doesn't make me feel anything close to better!"

"But, you shee," she added, "although he flied more recklesshy, he shtill didn't crash, so he wash actually kind've a better pilot."

"What is wrong with you, Stormslider!? You're supposed to be the voice of reason!"

"Wait, guysh... I don't have a blindfold," Silver piped in.

Apparently roused by an instinctive desire to bother me, Ember suddenly mustered the magic needed to untie my bandana and wrap it around Silver's goggles. Satisfied, she smiled and promptly passed out.

A few cannon balls flew past us, shot from behind. I weighed my options. _Death at the hooves of the Baron, or the Breaks? Certain death, or near certain?_ Looking ahead, the maze of thunderstorms and tornados swirling around eachother in a seemingly random dance of death didn't seem very inviting.

My stomach lurched. We were moving forwards. Silver was smirking dangerously under his blindfold. The Breaks approached.

Silver raised a hoof in excitement and pushed a slider forwards. "Here we gooooo!"

The first thing that I noticed was the constant roar of thunder. The lightning struck out from the black clouds surrounding us so frequently that the thunder made a constant, rolling, boom.

The second was the shaking. The entire ship shook so violently that I was worried it would fall apart. Stormslider was much too drunk to support herself amongst the vibrations. Nix and I both staggered about trying to keep our balance. Cleaver was impeccably still. Silver danced about, pulling levers and slapping switches, unbothered.

The third thing I noticed was the massive storm cloud that suddenly appeared in front of us, ready to send us down to our doom amongst all the failed travelers of ages past.

But Silver was already moving to avoid it, even before it was there. "Thish ish an excellent shhhip!" he shouted over the thunderous roar as he flew, informing us on the pros of the ship as if we were just walking through it as it sat in the dealership. "It'sh ash much a thought to fly ash I dreamed it woul' be!"

I was shaking. Not because of the wild vibrations, but because I was so scared shitless that we were all about to die in some fiery lightning explosion. _Luna save me, not fire. I hate fire._ I noticed Nix clinging to the ground, eyes squeezed shut.

"Don't worry, he's a very good pilot!" I told her, raising my voice to be heard over the local weather. I wasn't sure if she noticed, so I turned back to face the front, closed my eyes, and repeated that sentence to myself over and over.

I heard Silver let out another whoop and begin to hum a tune which I recognized as Flight of the Valkyries. All of a sudden my stomach was falling behind. I peeked open an eye to find that we were literally falling, the storm clouds racing past us as we rapidly approached the ground.

"Ach!" Silver exclaimed in a surprisingly good Germane accent. "Even her falling isht grasheful!"

I heard an explosion behind us that didn't sound like thunder. "It seems one of our followers has hit a storm cloud!" Cleaver cackled in an entirely unhealthy way. _Hay, this whole thing is unhealthy. Oh, Princess, by the Elements of Harmony help me!_

A large tornado descended to the ground, not in front of us, but actually _around _us. For a few brief moments, we hovered in the eye, moving along with the walls of the tornado as it tore across the landscape.

_How did I get into this? Have I written my will yet? I haven't spoken to my parents in years! Why, why, why!? I just want all of this to be over!_

To the side, I saw another of the ships that was chasing us come crashing through into the eye, decorated as a big burning ball of flaming wreckage.

Silver let out an alarmingly happy shout that made my heart skip three beats. The ship bolted for the wall of the tornado. I braced myself for impact, but as we were about to collide with the barrier of wind, the tornado dissipated around us.

"Look Dishy!" Silver cackled maniacally, "no eyesh!"

"Silver! Stop toying with my instinct for self-preservation!" _I swear if we get through this alive I'm going to wring his neck and break his other wing!_

Storm clouds closed in on each side, over and over again. But each time, Silver was already moving the ship to avoid them. Tornadoes and storms appeared and dissipated at incredibly distressing speeds, moving to intercept us and then simply blowing apart after they missed. And all the while, the thick walls of the Breaks were visible on each side, marking the point where the Cloudwall once again turned into the impenetrable net of thick electrical death.

I yelled as loudly as I could, for what it's worth.

I felt the ship lurch forwards as if struck. Silver let loose an evil laugh, reassuring me by saying, "Don't worry! Mosht airshipsh can handle a shingle lightning shtrike!"

"Were we just hit by lightning!?" I shrieked like a little filly. I noticed that Nix had passed out from terror. Stormslider was lying on the ground, laughing her flank off like there was something terribly funny about imminent death. Cleaver was sitting in a corner, discreetly humming what sounded to me like a funeral dirge.

"It'sh okay! It wash jusht one!" Silver called. As if to disprove him, the nearby clouds unleashed another wave of lightning bolts, and I felt the ship shake violently as it was struck several more times.

"We're loshing altitude!" He cheered as if that was just the best thing in the world, and was so unspeakably, delightfully happy to experience it that there was no way he could ever properly express it.

_We're going to die. I just know we're going to die. We're all, going to die. Die die die! All of us! Dead! Aaaaaaaaagh! We're all gonna die!_

Silver's maneuvers were slowing down. Without a fully sealed balloon to sustain the ship, he had to divert the maneuvering thrusters to keep us up, and couldn't turn, rise, or fall as fast. It seemed like everything was over when, finally, we broke out of the clouds and into clear, precious sunlight.

I looked up into the glorious sun of Princess Celestia, cherishing its rays. I hadn't gotten a clear view of it for so long. Hadn't been able to really feel its light. But I was free now!

_Free at last!_ We were free! I began to pass out right there. The last thing I felt was my joy at being free. _Free!_


	5. Ch 5: Cardinal Direction

Omega by Goldenwing42

* * *

Ch. 5: Cardinal Direction

**Omega**

**Chapter 5: Cardinal Direction**

"Okay, so now what?" Silver Feather asked.

I tried to ignore the question. Spread out on the table before me was a standard map of Equestria that we had found on a wall elsewhere in the airship. The shadows of the rest of my crew played across the table along with my own. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nix sitting next to a window, staring out at the Cloudwall behind us.

Stormslider cleared her throat. "I think it would be best if we figured out what is happening now before we decided what to do for the future, if we want to make a good and logical decision."

Quiet murmurs of agreement passed around the room.

"Well then, if I may," she began, "we're hovering above the Great Sea, in an unfamiliar airship stolen from the most powerful crime lord and connected merchant in Equestria, with no known stores of food or water, and almost all under massive hangovers. Can we agree?"

Everypony agreed.

She continued. "So, our top priority right now is survival. The airship will provide shelter, but we still need food and water. We have two choices as to where we can get that. One is Equestria. None of us know what the other is, or how to find it.

"To return to Equestria, we must pass through the Breaks. They are most likely to be heavily guarded by the Baron. To get elsewhere, we must cross the Great Sea without any knowledge of other landmasses or a reliable source of food. So which is it?"

I closed my eyes tight as a heavy silence descended upon the room. _We don't really have a choice. Returning to Equestria means death at the hooves at the Baron. Leaving means a slow death from starvation in the middle of nowhere._

_But at least we'd have a chance._

_Or a better chance, anyways._

"I say we leave."

There was no response, at first. Everypony looked away as I raised my eyes from the map. None of us wanted to go. Even if we survived, we'd be going somewhere so distant, so _unknown_ that we couldn't even begin to imagine what we might come to.

"I agree," Silver said. We exchanged glances, and I gave him a thankful nod. A wave of relief washed over me. Even to the ends of Equestria, he had my back.

The rest of the crew was quick to follow, nodding assent. I could tell they were glad to have the decision made by someone else. They didn't want the responsibility. That was mine to take on.

"Okay. First, we need to explore this ship and figure out what it can do," I said.

Ember narrowed her eyes. "And who made you captain?" she challenged, flicking her tail aggressively.

I looked down, flinching away from her challenge. _Why _should _they let me lead them again?_ I had already led them into slavery. I hadn't been the one to break us out. Now we were embarking on a journey to nowhere with no plan, no map, and no food. _If I can't handle one trade stop at Manehattan, how can I lead them into the unknown?_

Cleaver stepped up. "We have already forgiven Kaptain," Cleaver said firmly, raising himself to his full height. Ember wasn't deterred.

"He's already led us to slavery! He didn't even help to get us out. He just lay in the corner and screamed like a filly!" she yelled.

"Ember!" Stormslider snapped. "We all have our jobs. His is to coordinate us, and we'll need it in this ship. Would you prefer to lead us and leave the ship unrepaired? Or give Silver control and let us crash into the sea? We've already been hit by lightning several times. You need to focus on keeping the ship working."

Phoenix Down rose from her position, sitting along the outside of the room and gazing back at Equestria longingly. "Let him try again," she said softly.

Ember grimaced, ears back with hostility. "Fine," she growled. She glared at me. "This is your last chance. If you buck up again, I'll torch you myself."

"Well, then." Silver placed his hooves on the table, offering an easy smile to diffuse the tension. "Now we've got that settled, I suppose we should pick a direction, yeah? I'm thinking east," he suggested. "It's never done me wrong, and I've got a nice feeling about it."

I cocked a brow. "Any more rational reasons you may wish to grace us with?" I asked.

"No. You got a better idea? I'm the pilot anyways. Trust my intuition." He winked at me. I was not reassured.

I glanced around the room. Nopony offered any opposition to the direction. I sighed. "Fine. We head east and pray to Celestia we find land. But before we go any further, we need to search this ship for anything of use."

"And name her, too," Silver added.

Stormslider eyed him skeptically. "Name it?"

"Well yes," he asserted. "Can't fly around in an unnamed ship. What happens if we meet another crew and have to distinguish between our ship and theirs? I don't see a name anywhere."

I shrugged, sitting back half-heartedly. "Well, he's got a point." _This is gonna be our new home anyways..._ "Any suggestions?"

"_Pride of Stallions?_" Cleaver suggested.

Five incredulous looks were shot his way. He glanced around hopefully, saw he wouldn't be getting any support, and looked back down to his last bottle of vodka, crestfallen.

"I think _Omega_ would be a rather fitting name," Stormslider said.

"Is that even a word?" Nix asked.

"It's the last letter of the ancient pegasus alphabet," I supplied. "It represents the end, or the last of something."

Silver grinned, nodding. "Well, here we are at the end of the world, and this ship is the last chance we've got. I can't think of a better name." The rest of the crew murmured agreeably.

"It's settled, then. We'll name it the _Omega._ Now, can we please get to searching it?"

We divided the ship into sectors, with one pony assigned to each. Silver Feather handled the navigation floor. Ember and Phoenix Down split the cargo bay. Stormslider explored the engine room. Cleaver and I split the main floor.

We didn't find anything very inspiring at first. There was nothing useful in the engine room, besides the engine, which was beginning to show damage from the lightning. The kitchen lacked any food, despite our hopes to find some. The cargo hold was empty, besides a few beds, construction supplies, and tools Ember was happy to get her hooves on. We all picked one of the unfinished rooms on the main floor, and Ember began building and removing walls to make six larger rooms.

Surprisingly, the navigation floor contained the best find.

I had been half-heartedly sorting through debris from the chase, brooding over our inevitable deaths, when Silver called out from above.

"What is it?" I asked, poking my head into the cockpit. He was standing before a small, narrow hallway that I hadn't noticed before.

He grinned. "So here I was, looking for shortcuts, just tapping around, and bam!" He pointed to the hallway with a flourish of his hoof. "Secret passageway!"

I raised a brow. "Shortcuts?"

"Well, yes. Airships are mechanical creatures, full of all cogs and chains and stuff. They're compactly designed, too, so there isn't much room for all the machinery. A tap in the right place can do the same thing a lever on the other side of the room does, or even something entirely new. Our old airship had a few. I was just looking for this one's."

I nodded. _It makes a kind of sense._ Peering into the tiny opening, I squeezed myself inside. It was only a couple meters long, and just big enough to walk through. It was pitch black with my body blocking all the light from the cockpit.

Lighting my horn, I scraped through it with a burst of claustrophobic energy and came out into an unlit room. Dim shapes surrounded me, lining the edges of my vision. I fumbled around blindly, found a string hanging from above, and pulled it.

With a static buzz and a strained flicker, the bulb above me turned on. The dim light wasn''t much, but it was bright enough for me to get a better look at the room.

A pair of shelves lining the wall held several rune guns, like the ones I had seen in Harmony City. A crate of rune grenades and boxes of ammunition were stacked up on the far wall. I smiled. _A weapons stockpile!_

Grabbing one of the guns with my magic, I squeezed myself back into the cockpit where Silver was waiting. "Look, it's a bunch of rune guns!" I exclaimed. "This ship must have been important enough to have weapons stored here for defense, but nopony reached it in time." _Amazing._

"Sweet!" the pilot said. "Let's get the others and test it out on the deck."

"Deck?"

"Oh, yeah. There's a ladder in here to the top deck, too." He pointed towards a ladder at the rear of the cockpit. "It's flat enough for walking, but the railings are kind of short."

Trotting forwards curiously, I clambered up the ladder. The wind whipped at my mane as I pulled myself up onto the smooth steel of the ship's deck, carrying the salty scent of ocean sky. Cautiously, I raised myself to my full height and looked around. My jaw dropped.

I blinked, stunned by the sight of the empty, endless horizon. The air was clear, and the clouds sparse. An infinity of water stretched out before me, its size matched only by the equally infinite sky. I turned, my hooves clopping gently against the metal deck. I turned more. The water and sky showed no sign of any end. And then I saw the Cloudwall.

A massive wall of rolling black clouds, stretched up and to each side as far as I could see. Flashes of light and distant rumbles marked the presence of lightning as it arced through the gargantuan storm. If the Cloudwall had seemed big from inside Equestria, it looked absolutely massive from the outside, large enough to compete even with the ocean and sky.

I was struck with a terrible sense of loneliness, even as Silver's shadow came into view at the edge of my vision. In the course of a single day, my world had been both massively expanded and frighteningly contracted all at once. Now I only had my crew, myself, and my ship, in an endlessly empty world.

"Hey, you alright?" Silver's hoof laid itself firmly on my shoulder.

I shook my head, managed to close my mouth, and swallowed. "It's just... so much."

"Yeah," Silver said. Even though he was behind me, I could easily hear the adventurous grin on his face. "Great, isn't it?"

I turned, meeting eyes with him. "You're crazy, Silver."

His wild grin only stretched wider. "What tipped you off?" He glanced back to the ladder. "Anyways, what do you think about showing the others those guns?"

I gathered the crew, handing out guns and a few bullets to each as they arrived on the deck. Soon the six of us stood in a rough circle, manes and tails flapping in the breeze, and only occasionally turning to get another glance at our new world.

Now that I held one of the guns before me, I could examine it more closely. A bolt on the side could be pulled to open a slot to stick another bullet into the gun, and it had a simple scope on top. It wasn't a very large or long weapon, being mostly barrel, and had a firm, smooth stock.

"So, does anypony know how to shoot one?" Ember asked sarcastically.

"Oh, well that's easy," Silver said. "You just uh… just… hrm." He pulled the bolt on his gun a few times, only managing to eject an unspent round uselessly.

Cleaver held his gun up to the sky, squinting at it suspiciously. "I see no trigger."

I waggled the scope with a bit of magic experimentally, to no avail. "Have any of us actually shot a gun before?" I asked.

"Many times," Cleaver said. "But this gun lacks trigger."

Nix spoke up, standing a little ways away from the rest of the crew. "I think… I think it's voice activated. You use a trigger word to turn on the magic in the runes. I've heard the rebels using it when they practice."

"Well, what is it?" Stormslider asked.

"I think the word is… _ignus._"

With a sudden burst of dim light, the gun in her hooves began to hum. She let out a startled squeak, dropping it and backing away. The gun rattled loudly as it vibrated on the metal surface, the humming and glowing steadily growing more intense until, with a surprisingly quiet _woosh_, a bullet shot out.

The bullet ricocheted off the deck, zooming away and bouncing off the railing.

Ember leaped out of her shocked crouch, advancing on Nix angrily. "Are you crazy? You could've killed us!" she hissed.

I rushed forwards, pushing her back. "Hey, calm down! Nopony was hurt, and now we know how to activate them! No harm done." I glanced around in search of some way to change the subject. My eyes alighted on the clouds floating past us. "Why don't we try some target practice?"

"On what?" Cleaver asked?

Silver scoffed, using his wings to balance on his hind legs. "The clouds, of course." Wobbling slightly in the heavy wind, he balanced his gun on a foreleg, took aim, and spoke the trigger word.

A glowing purple round shot out of the barrel, streaking through the sky far wide of every cloud in the sky.

Stormslider laughed as the other pegasus fell back, dropping the gun in alarm as he lost his balance. "Some shot you are," she said, raising her own rifle.

A single spoken word later, a bullet punched straight through the center of a nearby cloud, leaving only a gentle purple haze and a whiff of vapor to mark its path.

"Wow," Silver said, climbing to his hooves. "She's pretty good at that."

Ω Ω Ω

And so the days stretched on, and the Cloudwall gradually drifted out of view.

As we traveled, the constant need for food, water, and maintenance drove us into a strict schedule. Stormslider flew circles around the ship all day, gathering the sparse clouds that hovered above the waves, stopping only to trudge down to the engine room for a few minutes. Silver Feather spent long hours in the map room, squeezing every cloud dry until he was dripping just as much as the clouds themselves. Cleaver spent his time finding food with a makeshift spear, made from a sharpened piece of deck railing and tied to a rope we found, throwing it into the ocean from the bottom of the low-flying ship and heaving anything he caught back up. Phoenix Down spent her days helping whoever needed aid with their various duties, and Ember trekked up and down the length of the ship, taking pieces from the sturdier areas to reinforce the increasingly severe structural wounds that had been inflicted upon the ship during the chase.

As for me, I was left with a guilty few tasks. I couldn't help the pegasi with the water, I didn't know enough about mechanics to maintain the ship, and I couldn't really cook. All I had to contribute was my horn, and I put it to work levitating whatever needed levitating. I held pieces for Ember, helped Cleaver with his makeshift harpoon, and supplied Silver with a steady flow of buckets.

By the end of each day, when we gathered in the lounge and collapsed exhausted on our sparse collection of furniture to eat and drink what we'd managed to collect, we barely had the energy to speak to eachother. My hunger was so ravenous that I devoured my ration of fish within minutes, both relishing and hating the food at the same time. I could barely swallow it, disgusted as I was at the concept of eating meat, but I was so _hungry_ that I couldn't stop.

For the first week or two, my dreams were plagued by darkness, fire, and ash. I relived Moon Dream's death, the discovery of Ironhide's corpse, the harrowed escape from Harmony City, and all the other atrocities I'd witnessed firsthoof over and over, countless times. Eventually though, the constant exhaustion of the days built up to the point where I was too tired to dream, and I would collapse into a blissful unconsciousness every night, given a few moments of rest before rising to begin again.

The concept of time began to fade. There was nothing to mark it except for the sun and moon, and trivial thoughts like the day of the week simply disappeared. There was nothing to discern one day from the next; everything ran together. I began to ground myself not in the passage of time, but in the worsening state of my crew. We grew lean, with only a few fish to split amongst ourselves. Heavy bags formed under our eyes. Our coats became ragged and dull. Despite being free, I still felt like a tired slave under the Baron's control.

Only one day managed to stand out from the others. I had been trudging up the central stairwell, exhausted as usual, the feeble glow of my magic surrounding a collection of recently emptied water buckets, when I heard a low roar from the back of the ship.

My ears twitched. I paused, raising my head from it's half-asleep position near the floor, and was suddenly knocked off my hooves as a great force pushed me down. The stairs shifted around me, and my stomach knotted as I was caught in a brief moment of freefall before my back slammed into the hard steel landing behind me, four steps down.

I groaned, raising my hooves to protect myself from the onslaught of dropped buckets raining upon me. A few moments passed as I lay there, being pushed down by the mysterious force, until my mind finally clicked into gear and I realized what was happening: we were ascending, and fast.

I clambered to my hooves, leaving the buckets behind, and raced as fast as my tired body would let me up the stairs.

A minute later, I burst into the cockpit, gasping. Silver was there, gazing downwards at something underneath us from the swept forwards glass screen at the front of the room.

"What was that?" I asked, walking up to his side.

"Look," he said.

I looked down, following his gaze.

"Sweet Celestia..."

Far beneath us, half-submerged in ocean spray, a behemoth fish was rising out of the water. It's massive jaws were wide open, revealing rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth, each one the source of its own waterfall of dripping saliva and saltwater. The teeth slammed together as the beast's ascent slowed to a stop, and it began to fall back into the water.

I watched wide-eyed as its body rolled to the side, showing dozens of aged scars from battles past and a ridge of sharp barbs along its spine. A pair of small, sinister eyes rolled into view, full of hatred and intelligence. It wasn't the look of a predator stalking prey, it was the look of a killer, a murderer that had failed to entrap his target.

A shiver ran down my spine as it splashed back into the water heavily, disappearing underneath the waves.

Silver stepped back from the glass and flicked his goggles off. He let out a heavy sigh of relief and gazed up at the roof.

"We won't be flying low anymore," he said.

Ω Ω Ω

More time passed, more water passed, and more hope of finding land passed away. I knew that continents usually had some distance between them, but airships were fast movers, and it felt like we'd already traveled the distance of a dozen Equestrias already.

Ember finished with the renovation of the quarters, giving us six decent-size rooms for us to call our own, even if there wasn't anything to put in them. Now she spent most of her time on the increasingly flimsy balloon, trying to hold it together. We began to travel slower and slower as Silver was forced to divert forwards propulsion to upwards propulsion. Worse still, after the appearance of the sea monster, it was too dangerous to fish. Luckily we had a few days of fish stockpiled.

I just hoped we found something before we ran out.

We did.

I was sitting with Silver in the navigation room, trying not to get too wet as he filled buckets from a fresh harvest of clouds.

"I don't understand this ship," he said. "I thought we would've crashed into the sea a week ago, but somehow it manages to stay up."

I yawned. "I thought you were keeping us up by directing our engines to push upwards?"

He shook his head, brow furrowed. "Yes, but we shouldn't have enough power to keep the ship up like that. The balloon is practically empty and our engines are faltering, yet somehow we still float. It's like the thing is made of air."

I shrugged, climbing to my hooves. "The important thing is that we survive. I'm gonna go get some fresh air."

_Fresh air._

For the tenth time that day, I climbed up onto the deck to get another glimpse of the sky. Nothing had changed since last time, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The _Omega_ was a small ship, and being stuck inside it for so long was driving me crazy. I stepped up to the railing and peered down into the ocean. _How much longer until it all ends?_

Sighing, I turned around and began to walk slowly back to the ladder. I paused. _What was that?_

I returned my gaze to the sky, squinting. There was a shape out there. A silhouette in the sky that was distinctly un-cloudlike. It had wings, but it was too small to be a pegasus. _Surely Stormslider isn't out that far...?_

My eyes widened as I came to the sudden realization. My heart soared. I twisted around, practically fell down the ladder in my haste, and bowled Silver over. Water buckets went flying, spilling their contents all over.

"What are you doing?"he growled. He tried to wriggle out of my grip, splashing more water from his soaked mane, but to no avail. I grinned at him stupidly.

"Bird."

He cocked a brow. "What? Have you finally-" he paused, locking eyes with me as if he had heard me for the first time. I stepped back and allowed him to rise into a sitting position. We stared at eachother.

"Bird?" he asked.

I nodded. "Bird."

"Bird!"

"Birds!"

Silver leapt to his hooves, flapping his good wing excitedly as he let out a cry of elation that could be heard all throughout the ship.

"We've reached land!"

Ω Ω Ω

Land was close at hoof, and we began to hope again.

The birds were a beautiful gift. Not only did they herald land, but they also gave us a new source of food. On the day of the discovery we had only had two fish left in our stockpile, and they were the least savory specimens I had ever seen, even with my limited experience with meat. The birds were still meat, of course, and they didn't taste anywhere near good, but they were _food._

We would survive. We had survived the journey, though it had been hard. Sitting in the lounge the day after the discovery, forcing myself to nibble at some bird as I looked over my crew, I could still scarcely believe it. We were all exhausted. With the arrival of the birds, the stress of the journey was finally lifted. Our manes and coats were disheveled and dirty, but we were alive. We'd made it.

"Hey, why don't we do something fun?" Silver suggested. He was lying on the end of one of the old, broken-in couches that had been in the lounge when we stole the ship.

Nix perked up from her spot leaning against the wall. "Like what?"

He shrugged. "We could try some target practice with the rune guns."

She relaxed back against the wall, apparently uninterested in the idea, but the rest of the crew all nodded their agreement.

We spent the rest of the day on the deck with the guns and some bullets, able to work on something besides survival for the first time in weeks. Stormslider was a pretty good shot. She hit her target cloud more than anypony else, and even managed to hit a nearby bird. The bullets had some heavy punch to them, and the bird went flying away from the force of the impact. She kept looking at her gun as she fired, as if trying to figure out how it worked, and later went into her room with it and a clip of ammunition to tinker.

I was, of course, a terrible shot. I couldn't hit the long side of a cumulonimbus.

As the sun began its descent, we came upon what I took to be the mainland. For the first time in what felt like forever, something besides blue occupied the horizon.

Our shadow came ashore on some kind of wasteland. I scanned the land beneath us from a window, but deep fog made it difficult to pick out much detail. A gust of wind blew a hole in the mist, and I glimpsed grey, lifeless earth. A mountain range ran parallel to the coastline in the distance, and the faint silhouette of some sort of city lay far up the coast.

"What do you think lives out here?"

I jumped, looking behind me. Nix stepped up to my side, eyeing the window anxiously. "What do you mean?" I asked.

"Something has to be living here," she said. "I doubt they're ponies."

I turned back to the horizon thoughtfully. "I don't know. I know dragons and griffons are from outside Equestria. Maybe there'll be some of those."

"Yeah," she agreed. She looked at me and smiled. "As long as you're with us, I think we'll be safe."

I furrowed my brow, confused. _How can she say that? I've never led my crew anywhere but slavery and exile._

The wasteland passed below us. Sparse clumps of trees and bushes surrounded shallow pools of water, but I saw no animals. I found my mind drifting. Thoughts of Moon Dream, the rebels, and the fate of Harmony City passed through my head as I looked down upon the unknown world.

Suddenly, Silver Feather came bounding down the stairs. "Hey, Dissy. Get everypony upstairs. We may have trouble."

Ω Ω Ω

"What is it?"

We were all assembled around Silver in the cockpit. He pointed upwards, towards another, smaller ship that I hadn't noticed before circling above us.

"There's another ship there," he said. "They've positioned themselves above us. I don't like it."

Cleaver squinted up at the ship. "Those markings, what are they?" he asked.

Three distant, distinct booms sounded. A second passed. With a loud crunch, a massive bullet impacted the cockpit glass and ricocheted away.

Ember shouted an expletive, and Cleaver almost dropped his bottle in surprise. The crew crouched instinctively as two more bullets whizzed past us.

"Evasive maneuvers!" I shouted.

"Oh really, you think so, genius?" Silver replied. He leapt for a group of four large wheels, turning them two at a time. "Hey Diss, turn that slider all the way up!" He pointed with his good wing.

I ran to obey, shoving the slider forwards with both hooves. The ship shot forwards like it had been fired from a cannon, and we began losing altitude fast. I heard our attackers fire another salvo.

Silver shoved me aside, goggles down. "Thanks! Step aside now, please!" He lunged for a chain hanging from the ceiling and pulled it with all his weight. Our downwards motion slowed dramatically as three more bullets flew underneath us. He turned two of the large wheels, and we began to rise.

"I'm gonna put us into that mountain range," Silver said, indicating a group of mountains ahead of us.

"Don't we have any guns on this thing?" Ember asked. "What kind of crimelord makes a ship with _no guns_?"

"Storm, the engines!" I said. The blue pegasus nodded and sprinted down the stairs to the lounge. Shortly afterwards we picked up speed, gliding smoothly between two mountains into a narrow valley. More bullets flew past, bouncing off of mountaintops.

"Ideas, anypony?" Silver tugged on the chain again, and a bullet flew right past our noses..

"I dunno, ram them or something." Ember suggested. The pilot found the time to turn and glare at her.

Luckily, our pursuers weren't very good shots. Another bullet flew wide, hitting a mountainside ahead of us and spawning an avalanche.

The sound of tearing metal announced the arrival of a heavy metal ball as it slammed through our hull and into the navigation room. It ricocheted off two more walls, broke the table, and rolled to a stop, hissing quietly.

Ember's eyes widened. "It's a bomb!" Nix slid under the wreckage of the table, shaky hooves over her head. Cleaver dashed for the explosive, twisted on his forehooves, and bucked it cleanly back out the hole it had made. Half a second later, I heard a loud boom. The ship rocked to the side slightly.

"They are shooting explosive bullets," Cleaver explained.

"Hey, thanks for telling us Sherlock," Silver muttered.

_C'mon, think think think._ An idea came to my mind. "Get the rune guns and head for the deck," I ordered.

"First good idea you've had in awhile," Ember quipped. She squeezed into the hidden armory, and guns and bullets began to float out.

With weapons in hoof, Cleaver, Ember, Nix, and I climbed out onto the deck. Silver stayed in the cockpit. "I promise not to throw you off!"he called.

Our attackers had a much smaller, more makeshift ship than ours. It looked like somepony had taken a sea vessel, welded an engine to each side, and tied it to a balloon. The _Omega _was four stories tall and around 200 feet long; the hull of our pursuer's ship could probably fit in the lounge, minus its engines and balloon. I spied several shapes moving around on its open top, including a griffon, idly spinning a grappling hook.

They fired another volley. The _Omega_ dipped slightly, and I almost lost my balance as the cannon balls flew a few feet over my head.

"Shoot the engines!" I commanded. We all raised our guns, and the soft hum of rune magic and trigger words filled the air. The wooden hull of our pursuer's stood no chance against the heavy rune slugs, which ripped through it easily. The ship listed to the left, and was then thrown into a wild spin as the failed engine suddenly exploded. The propeller flew upwards, cutting their balloon in half.

Bereft of propulsion and with no means to keep it in the air, the little wooden ship plummeted out of the sky. It crashed into a mountainside, rolled briefly, and burst into flame as the second engine followed the lead of the first.

I rocked on my hooves as the Omega slowed to a stop.

Cleaver leaned on his gun like a cane. "Perhaps we are lucky, and all ships here will be made of wood, yes?"

Silver's hoofsteps sounded behind us. "Nice shooting, guys! Who needs ship-to-ship cannons when you have these babies, right?"

"Don't get too cocky, I think some of them survived." Ember pointed at the five winged shapes flying towards from the wreckage.

"Oh, great. They fly. I'mma go get my own gun." Silver turned and rushed back down the ladder.

As they approached I began to pick out detail. The closest two I recognized immediately as griffons, but the other three were completely foreign to me. They looked like the gargoyles I'd seen in paintings of the time before the Princesses, with sharp claws and wide wingspans. As Silver returned to the deck, brandishing his own rune gun, the five attackers flew up into the sun and dove down at us.

They slammed into the deck, weapons ready. Nix and I were separated from the rest of the crew, who had gathered into a rough line. They managed to fire off a quick volley of shots, killing two, before another two fell upon them.

The remaining griffon turned to me. He approached slowly, with a wicked grin painted on his beak. His wings flared, revealing the array of deadly blades fastened to them.

Nix dropped her gun and fell over in fear. I raised my weapon, finding myself at a sudden loss as to how to fire it. I desperately searched for some kind of trigger as the griffon charged forwards.

The griffon was only a few feet away when I remembered. "_Ignus!_" I screamed. The gun began to charge, but the griffon knocked it aside before it finished, and the bullet sped into the sky harmlessly as he continued to tackle me, driving me back.

"Stop! Please stop! I don't want to fight you!" I beat his back with my forehooves as I fought to get a grip on the floor. The wind was knocked out of me as he pinned me down at the edge of the deck.

"But _I_ do," he hissed. He raised a wingblade for the killing blow. I struggled vainly to break free.

A bullet suddenly exploded out of his neck, splashing blood all over my face. His body went slack as the force of the round propelled it through the railing.

The griffon tumbled off the deck, and the claw stuck in my shoulder dragged me with him. I screamed as the weight pulled me over the edge.

I slid down the side of the ship, flapping my good leg wildly in search of something to grab.

My body spun sideways.

My right arm slipped off the edge of the ship.

I scrabbled for a hold with my left.

The ship fell out of reach.

The griffon's claw ripped free of its host.

My heart stopped. I found myself in the sickeningly empty, screaming abyss of freefall.

I thought I heard someone calling my name, but the wind carried it away. The ship dwindled rapidly above me. Silver's head poked over the edge of the ship.

_Don't you jump. You can't catch me with that bad wing._

And then a cloud blocked my view of the _Omega_, and there was nothing left but me and the wind. I fell past the clouds, surprisingly calm, tumbling head over hooves. I closed my eyes...

They shot back open. _No! No giving up!_

I twisted my neck, somehow turning my body to face the swiftly approaching ground. There was a lake beneath me. I felt my horn leaking magic as adrenaline surged through me. Time seemed to slow down.

I focused all my magic onto my body, but I couldn't slow myself. It was impossible to overcome the mental barrier that stopped all unicorns from levitating themselves. On a frantic whim, I tried an alternate technique.

I reached out with my magic and grabbed the air, pushing it under me. The air resisted, escaping my magical grasp through every little hole it found. Nonetheless, I felt myself slowing down.

The lake was almost on me. I waited. I only had one chance, and the timing had to be perfect.

I put all my magic into one massive upwards push, from the lake up to me. The surface of the lake rose up underneath me like a fountain, slowing my fall.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to stop me completely.

And then the hard surface of the water hit me, and my world went dark.


End file.
